


Lost & Found in Old Atlantis

by glinda4thegood



Series: Pirates: Lost and Found [1]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-09
Updated: 2011-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbossa and Elizabeth Swann set sail to recover an old treasure and recoup Barbossa's losses after the sinking of his trove. Begins post-AWE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lost and Found

_**A Better Woman**_  
 **Chapter 1: Lost & Found in Old Atlantis**  
Post AWE, B/E to J/E  
Disclaimer: A nod to Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things as poetic muse.  


 _He found he wasn’t the least bit surprised when she appeared in the doorway of Tortuga’s second-best tavern._

 

Elizabeth Swann Turner wore boy’s breeches, a muslin shirt, and an expression Hector Barbossa had seen on her face before. It was an expression that arose from the pure, deep resolve of the woman’s character, and engendered simultaneous dread, amusement and anticipation in him.

“Looking for something. No, someone,” Barbossa said under his breath. He watched Elizabeth take in the raucous scenery with one sweeping glance. Smoke from the murky interior twisted around her silhouette, caressed her tightly braided hair. Her eyes met his and she froze, a posed model for the finest ship’s figurehead he could imagine.

“But not for me, I think.” He watched as those eyes dismissed him, then reconsidered. Elizabeth pushed her way through the crowd toward his table, trailing a sheepish looking Gibbs in her wake.

Barbossa hoisted his mug to her. He rolled the fiery liquor over his tongue savoring the burn that came when he swallowed. “Mrs. Turner. A pleasure.”

“Captain Barbossa. I would prefer you refer to me as Captain Swann. I am, after all, your King.”

 _Ah. Hit a nerve there._ She was either sensitive about her married status, or his failure to accord her a spurious rank. The tone in her voice precisely complemented the expression on her face.

Barbossa pushed back his chair and stood. “My apologies, Captain Swann. Would you join me in a celebratory drink? The world’s a somewhat better place for our actions. I admit that’s a rare claim for me, and one I’ve been contemplating for the past few weeks.”

“Are you quite sure that Jack’s theft of your chart isn’t what you’ve been contemplating?” Elizabeth scraped back the chair across from him. “Mr. Gibbs was kind enough to enlighten me on how the Pearl came to be once again in your possession. And how your charts came to be in Jack’s possession.”

Barbossa reached for one of two bright green apples that decorated the center of the scarred wooden table. He shrugged and bit down into the crisp, white flesh. “I’m not the man to hold a grudge, nor one to rail against fate, seein’ as she’s been so kind to me of late.”

Gibbs cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “If you don’t mind . . .”

“Thank you, Gibbs.”

Taking her words for dismissal, Gibbs backed away and was immediately obscured by the crowd.

“Rum!” Barbossa took another bite of apple, chewed, and watched her face. “How’d you get here?”

“We managed.”

Her eyes seemed fixed on the apple. Barbossa licked his lips and smiled. She was stubborn and single-minded, traits he didn’t usually appreciate in a woman. “You find yourself -- temporarily -- without a ship?”

“I . . .”

“Stars and garters! You’re the one!” The roundest, most dimpled of the serving wenches had responded to his bellow for rum. She clutched her apron, kneading it in excitement as she stared at Elizabeth.

“Bring me more rum, and one for the lady.” Barbossa flipped the apple core at her and nudged her leg with his foot. “At once.”

“The one?” Elizabeth’s eyes were wary.

“Aye. The lass who wed the new Captain of the Dutchman.” The wench’s breasts jiggled with her rapid breathing and trembling excitement. “Most romantic thing I ever heard tell! How young Will Turner stabbed Davy Jones’ heart and freed his father. How he took the Dutchman’s helm as Captain, and now serves the goddess Calypso. How his wife keeps her eye on the horizon, dreams of him, and holds herself chaste and ready for his return in 10 years time.” The wench rolled her eyes and smacked her lips. “Saw him once, I did. Young Will. I’d wait 10 years if I knew he would end up at my door. Don’t know about the chaste part . . . but you’re probably a better woman than I am.”

Barbossa bit his tongue, then decided there was no point in trying not to laugh. Elizabeth’s eyes met his. The laugh died on his lips.

“That’s the story, is it?” Elizabeth asked.

His weather knee, the ache of which frequently presaged bad weather, twitched. Barbossa’s arms prickled as the flesh of his skin contracted and the hairs on his arms stood at attention. Elizabeth’s eyes contained the same elemental fury he’d seen dancing on the mast of the Pearl. St. Elmo’s fire was a paler, calmer thing in comparison to those eyes.

“Does the story say that the woman who became his wife was first voted Pirate King by the Brethren, and commanded the battle that broke the tyranny of the East India Trading Company?”

The wench shrugged. “Perhaps.” She frowned, considering the question at greater length. “But if you’re here, you can’t be the lass after all. No matter. Great story. Rum you said!”

She was off with a bounce of her ample behind.

They sat quietly, carefully not looking at each other. When the rum came Elizabeth emptied her mug as if it was milk.

“More.”

“D’ya want to talk about it?” It was a grudging question. Barbossa was firmly disinclined to hear any female diatribe on any subject, particularly emotional blather over young Will, or any blather concerning that scoundrel Jack Sparrow.

“No one’s talked about it yet. Why should I be the first?” Her lovely mouth curled into a sneer. “I prefer action, or drinking. No talking.”

“As you wish.”

They drank, silent for a time. It was like sitting in the eye of a storm, Barbossa thought. She held her rum well, but the slight glazing of her eyes eventually betrayed that she was well and truly drunken.

“Jack. He’s not on the Pearl?” she said at last.

“No. But you could see the Pearl again. You’ll need a place to sleep off the rum.” He wasn't sure why he made the offer. No good could come of bringing her back to the Pearl.

“Yes. I would see the Pearl again.”

She stood and walked steadily, surely. Barbossa led the way out of the tavern, but once outside they walked side by side. He took a deep breath of night air, redolent with Tortuga’s scent of distilled humanity. His heart seemed, suddenly, to beat more steadily and firmly. Sight, smell, hearing, all seemed to sharpen under night’s blanket. Tar and tobacco, brewer’s yeast and brine, the melange of offal-rich dirt and salty fishiness wafting off the near-shore waters of the port all joined the rum in his blood with the potency of hasheesh smoke.

“I feel -- alive.” Barbossa threw back his head and laughed as they caught sight of the Pearl, black against blacker waters.

“I feel -- ” her voice trailed off. “Rum may be a vile drink, but tonight I feel quite vile, so thank God for rum.”

“Tonight and every night. I remember all too clearly what it is to do without rum.” And food. And . . .

“As I imagine, all too clearly, what it will be like to do without . . .”

 _Ah. Lay the wind in that quarter?_ As alive as he felt at that moment, Barbossa was wary of where such a wind might blow him. Rocks and wicked undertow, if Will’s and Jack’s experience could be considered a chart.

“She is a beautiful ship. Battered and bedamned though she is.” Elizabeth stopped walking at the first sight of open water. “Shall I steal her from you, Captain Barbossa?”

“Please to try, Captain Swann.”

Ragetti was on deck as they climbed aboard. “Captain Swann!”

“R’getti.” Elizabeth’s voice finally betrayed the smallest slur. “If I did have a ship, you’d be welcome to crew for me. Good man, for a pirate.”

“Thank you.” Ragetti looked completely awestruck at her commendation. “Captain?”

“Captain Swann is fine, just had a bit o’rum. She’ll be in the Captain’s cabin.”

Barbossa let her lead the way to the cabin. He closed the door behind them and quietly set the latch. He removed his hat and hung it on a peg.

“You have more rum here?” Elizabeth walked to the windows to stare out over the sea.

Barbossa lit a small lamp. “I paid for most of what you drank in the tavern.” He held up his hands at her snort of disdain. “My choice. But now I’d like a bit of recompense. I’ll give you a drink, if you’ll give me some conversation.”

“Conversation? You want to talk?” Her voice was thick with scorn and rum. “Talk for a drink? Fine pirate you are. Aye. I can do that.”

“Have a seat, then.” The rum he poured into two glasses was a thicker, darker stuff than the usual cheap liquor the ports served, laden with sweetness and herbs.

“Tell me why you’re here.”

Elizabeth trailed her fingers over the thick lip of the glass. “Where else would I be?”

“Bedamned.” He really was alive again. It was a young man’s reaction, that sweetly painful heat of anticipation that left him half-hard and wanting.

“Where else would Elizabeth Swann Turner choose to go? My father is dead. My husband is dead. I have no ship and no crew.”

She made a lovely widow, Barbossa thought. All pearl and ivory silk in the dance of lamplight on her skin. Like an oriental goddess.

“Sao Feng thought I was a goddess,” she said. “He kissed me and died.”

For one terrible moment Barbossa wondered if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

“I didn’t become one of the Pirate Captains through my own deeds, but at the bequest of another,” she continued. “And I became Pirate King because of Jack.”

“Think no less of yourself because of that.” The thoughts he was having had not been shared inadvertently, Barbossa realized with relief. “What we become, there’s always others who contribute, for good and ill. And what you did with what you became -- that was all you. Captain Elizabeth Swann. Scourge of the EITC.”

“Scourge. I like the sound of that.” She tipped the glass to her mouth and sipped at the liquor. “Sweet. It’s good.”

A bead of amber liquid lingered on her lower lip. Barbossa leaned toward her, unable to tear his eyes away. The tip of her tongue, small and pink, dainty as a newborn kitten’s, gathered the drop away leaving a sheen of moisture on her skin.

“We’ve both experienced curses, and looked death in the eye,” Barbossa whispered. “Yet here we are. For me this is particularly sweet. I no longer have to depend on the memory of past pleasures. Console yourself that such limitation has never been one of yours.”

“Curses?” Elizabeth cocked her head and regarded him with an almost sober stare. “I have not been cursed, and misfortune has been formally requested to seek another port. I need no consolation -- but I do need a ship.” She watched him intently as she said the words, eyes narrowed, fingers clenched around her glass.

“I’m beginning to understand why Jack went mad -- madder.” This time he spoke his thoughts aloud, deliberately.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened and she moved uncomfortably in her chair. “You are looking at me as if I were an apple, Captain Barbossa.”

There was no reason he shouldn’t, Barbossa thought. She was a widow, after all, and Jack had foolishly avoided claiming what might have been his for the asking.

“I’d like a bit more of that sweet rum.”

“Another glass, another bargain.” Barbossa removed his pistol and set it beside his chair. “Another drink if you loosen your hair.”

Elizabeth frowned. “You’re beginning to sound more like a pirate.” Her fingers went to the braid and began to untwine the strands. The hair came out crimped, a fall of watered silk that fanned over the shoulders of her mannish shirt.

Barbossa poured a small amount of rum into her glass. “The Code says things about having women aboard ship, y’know.”

“And young boys,” Elizabeth shrugged. “Code. Guidelines. Pirates will do what they can get away with.”

“Truth.” Barbossa leaned further across the table. He brushed her hair aside and cradled her cheek in one hand. “What can I get away with?”

“If you have to ask, you’re not a pirate,” she said.

Her mouth was sweet with liquor, and warm. Barbossa breathed in the scent of rum on her skin and felt her lips part and her tongue meet his own. It was a slow kiss that started carefully, then turned to something reckless and wild.

“I trust you will not die on me,” Elizabeth said as she stood, and in one swift motion pulled the shirt over her head.

“I trust if I do, you will be well pleased before I breathe my last.” Barbossa’s chair clattered backwards. “Don’t be in such a rush. I’d like to watch you disrobe.”

“I’m disinclined to acquiesce to that request.” Elizabeth stepped out her breeches.

Barbossa felt his heart stop for one second before redoubling its efforts. Goddess had been an apt appellation.

She came to him without self-consciousness or shame, and helped him remove the rest of his weapons and clothing. Her fingers found the scar above his heart and lingered there. “How many of us are so marked?” she whispered. “Outside and inside.”

“Think happier thoughts.” Barbossa’s fingers skimmed the cool smoothness of her back and followed his own advice. Silk. Ivory. Pearl.

“I’m thinking . . . of you on that bunk, on your back.”

“Since that nicely suits me own thoughts, I am most happy to oblige.”

“Less talking.” Elizabeth’s lips traced the mark Jack’s bullet had left. Wisps of green fire seemed to ignite where her mouth touched, traveling through the graying hair of his chest, making its way directly to his groin.

“Do all sailors have tatoos? Signs, symbols, decorations? And this?” Her mouth paused by a marking on his side. “A fabulous beast, coiled just here . . .”

“Good of you to notice. Less talking, you said.” Her hips were slim, barely rounded. Barbossa hesitated as he moved to guide her to him. “Do you need --?”

“No. And Yes.” Elizabeth rose above him, figurehead to his prow. With exquisitely slow control she took him into her. “A snug fit, Captain.”

It took Barbossa a moment to find his voice, a moment he used to brush his fingers over her nipples and explore her high breasts. “Snug and true, Captain.”

They moved together. Near drowning in the deep swells of pleasure that came with that movement, Barbossa knew from the purposeful tension in her thighs, from the inarticulate, gull-like cries that came from her throat, that Elizabeth drowned with him.

When he could no longer bear the waiting he stopped her with a gentle hand. “I’m an old man, Captain Swann. It’s going to be now.”

“I’m ready.” She smiled down at him, blissful, and slid down on his body with a liquid shudder that pulsed around his cock and shook his body with typhoon force.

“Will’s a fool,” Barbossa said, when he could speak again. “And Jack’s a double fool.”

Elizabeth curled beside him, stroking the scar over his heart. “They are what they are,” she whispered. “Pirates and good men. Give me your opinion, Captain Barbossa. Is it possible to steal something freely given?”

Rocks. Undertow. And too late, Barbossa thought. “Get some sleep. You won’t be getting the Pearl.” He closed his eyes and let his fingers wander over one small breast and nipple. “But you could ask me for her, nicely. I might be inclined to consider a proposal.”

“Proposal.” Elizabeth yawned hugely. “I propose you give me the Pearl.”

“Quiet. Sleep.”

She was a warm, quiet weight against his heart. Asleep and at peace, Barbossa thought.

“I am,” she said softly.

“You are?”

“A better woman. And in the morning I’ll illustrate this fact to you.”

If he were a wise man, Barbossa thought, he’d get her back on dry land and head for open sea with all possible speed.

But not, perhaps, until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.


	2. Lost and Found

_A panoply of black spun around him, an infinite whirlpool._

Barbossa knew which way was up because tiny white points of light studded the dark above his head. Below his feet a profound blackness dropped away, as if a kraken-sized octopus had emptied its ink sack into night water. As he strained to orient himself, it seemed there might be lights, of a kind, in the black depths. Vague patches of grey came and went as quickly as he perceived them. He was cold. Alone. And filled with a sense of dreadful portent.

 _This is wrong,_ Barbossa thought. _I’ve already been here, and returned whole._

At the edge of the world he’d been jubilant and defiant, clinging to the Pearl’s wheel, laughing like a madman. Ready and eager to make a leap.

In this new maelstrom he struggled to avoid taking that fast drop into the unknown. Every survival instinct he possessed clamoured loud warning.

Barbossa sat up and brushed dream from his eyes. It was dark in the cabin, close and warm. The air smelled of old leather and rum, sweat and sex, with an undercurrent of that infernal incense Jack had burned constantly. Next to him on the bunk Elizabeth slept deeply, without stirring.

He rose and pulled on a shirt and breeches. As he lifted the door latch, she murmured in her sleep and turned. The long line of her back and naked legs seemed to glow with the magical, nacreous light of a pale pink pearl, freshly discovered. The sight made his stomach tighten and his cock make suggestions it was presently incapable of acting upon.

Barbossa closed the door quietly behind him.

They were two nights out of Tortuga, moving roughly north at a fair speed. Gibbs was at the wheel, humming a song Barbossa did not recognize. He nodded at his Captain, but didn’t speak. Barbossa nodded back. The man was a good sailor, in spite of a possible over-fondness for Jack Sparrow.

Jack Sparrow. The man had always been like a sliver that evades extraction, that works its way deep into your flesh and festers. It seemed to Barbossa that everywhere he looked there were festering bits of Jack.

Barbossa remembered a conversation with a younger Elizabeth, in the cabin now indelibly marked as her own. A lament about the wind on his face, the spray of the sea, and the lack of a woman’s warmth.

He no longer lacked.

“Should have left her on land, Cap’n.”

“That’s not a subject ye’ll be commentin’ on, Mr. Gibbs.” The crew had been very circumspect to date. A good thing. Barbossa found himself unaccountably conflicted over the presence of Elizabeth Swann Turner in his cabin and bed. Cynically he mused on his apparently enhanced reputation among most of the crew. They gave him too much credit.

Barbossa took a deep breath of sea air and stiffened his backbone. “You know what to watch for, although it’s early yet.”

“Aye.” Gibbs gave him a look, and rolled his eyes. The expression on his face was not that of a man who envied another man’s good fortune.

After the sea air the cabin seemed even closer. Elizabeth stirred, then sat up as he closed the door.

“Barbossa. Is all well?”

They had dropped the “Captain” when speaking to each other. This both amused and alarmed Barbossa, but he was unable to explain to his satisfaction where the alarm portion of his reaction originated.

“All is well.” A sudden craving for tobacco and pears made his mouth water. She awakened appetites, he thought. Appetites that went beyond the flesh, back to a state of being where he was young again, fired with the desire to consume everything life could offer. “You should sleep.”

“You’re not sleeping.” Elizabeth stretched, watching him watch her.

“Brush one of those hands over a breast as you do that, grazing a nipple -- so. Then down over your stomach,” Barbossa said. “It’s most effective.”

“You’ve been thinking too much.” She sat cross-legged, forearms resting on her knees, at ease with her nakedness and his regard. “Will you tell me now where we’re headed?”

Barbossa joined her on the bunk. “You haven’t been dead,” he said. “It’s not somethin’ you ever stop thinking about.”

Elizabeth looked at him, a serious, measuring evaluation. She traced the furrows on his face, a feather touch. “Tell me a story, Barbossa. Tell me what it’s like to be dead.”

Desire rushed over him, a thundering liquid surge that swallowed sky and earth and left only the sea and her body.

“Better to show you what it's like to be alive. I’ll trace a map of the earth on your skin, and chart the heavens between your lovely thighs.” Barbossa’s lips followed his words. Her nipples were hard. She gasped when he flicked one with teeth and tongue. The skin between the valley of her small breasts, along the downy trail to her belly and below was softer than chamois leather. “You tell me of death, missy. You’ve slept with the dead. Let dead lips roam here . . .”

Elizabeth sprawled backwards on the bunk. knees akimbo, hips arching toward his touch. “Will never touched me thus.” She stopped speaking, an intake of breath and throaty moan communicating more than words could.

She tasted of the sea, and he could swear, of ripe pears. Barbossa took the small bit of flesh between his lips and pulsed his tongue against the warmth and sweetness, clamping his hands on her trembling thighs.

“Now! Damn you, now!” Elizabeth pushed him away. She rolled him beneath her on the bunk, scrabbling at the fastening of his breeches. In a single movement she freed him and, sure as a homing bird finding its roost, engulfed him in wet heat.

She was finding her own knowledge of life and death, Barbossa thought, before thought dissolved into sensation so intense he became nothing but a fleck of spume riding a cresting wave. He helped her as he could, stroking and pressing against her. When she threw back her head and stiffened, the heat of her body around his cock pulsing like a heart beat, Barbossa let his own body do what it wanted to do, needed to do.

Elizabeth looked down at him through a cloud of hair and laughed. “Does my face change like that when the pleasure takes me?” she teased, touching her mouth to his cheek as she pulled away from his body.

“Change? To what?” Barbossa watched her pour water into the basin she had placed nearby on a flat-topped chest.

“Slack-jawed amazement.” Elizabeth washed herself quickly. “I need a proper bath.”

Barbossa reached for his breeches. “Your jaw remains very tight,” he said sourly. “But I’m comforted no end to know I don’t appear to you as the drooling simpleton I’ve been feeling of late. Merely -- slack-jawed.”

She laughed, a musical, carefree sound of pure joy that sent a shiver of fear over Barbossa’s skin. He’d fought dangerous men and killed without compunction or remorse. He knew he’d hardened with age, lost the finer sensibilities of youth. He’d braved unknown waters, the wrath of a goddess, the certainty of his own mortality. Yet he found himself unprepared for the fear that came in response to a woman’s joy.

“Where were we?” Elizabeth wrapped herself in his shirt. “Tell me a story, Barbossa.”

“No story tonight, but I’ll trade you questions.” He eased himself next to her on the bunk, half sitting, with the ship at his back. She lay next to him, one hand resting on his leg. “Did you know your mother?”

“Mother?” The question startled her. “Yes. She died shortly before father and I left for Port Royal. It was a riding accident. She loved horses, loved to ride.”

“And your father never thought of remarriage?”

Elizabeth turned onto her side and stared at him. “I don’t think so. And I don’t believe he ever had a mistress. Do you think he was waiting for me to marry? He was a very proper man . . .”

“Not a drop of pirate blood?” In his experience, men like Weatherby Swann did not go through life without the comfort of a woman’s bed. “D’you resemble her?”

“I think so. My features and coloring, certainly,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

“An old man’s curiosity. With the loss of goods on the Isle de Muerta, and Jack Sparrow’s theft of me charts, I find us at something of a loose end. We’re headed for a small island where I once took the precaution of leaving something of value.” Barbossa saw the spark light her eyes, a spark he’d seen in many men’s eyes over the years.

“Something of value? More treasure?”

“Mmm. Real treasure is rarely found, missy. I’m mostly concerned with keeping the men in coin, and providing for the Pearl things she cannot provide for herself.” As he said the words it struck Barbossa how oddly he’d phrased his intent.

Elizabeth had heard it as well. She cocked her head to one side and held his eyes. “A trade of questions, you said. How did you become a Pirate Lord?”

“That’s more in the nature of a story.” Barbossa flexed his stiff leg and groaned. “And perhaps someday you’ll get the whole of it. Short answer -- I took the title from a dead man.”

Someday she might know the main of his life, Barbossa thought, but he would not act out an old man’s folly. He had seen what Elizabeth Swann Turner was capable of doing, and did not delude himself that the act of getting naked and intimate with her somehow made her more docile or predictable. Or safe to confide in.

“Dead men tell no tales . . .” Elizabeth half sang the words. She lay back and closed her eyes. “You’ve died once, Jack died once, the Pearl’s died twice. I think others will tell the tales.” She yawned and settled deeper into the tangle of blankets. “Night, love.”

Barbossa was off the bunk without consciously moving a muscle. “You will not use that language between us, Captain Swann.”

Elizabeth responded to the undeniable threat in his voice. She rolled off the bunk and faced him in a defensive stance. “Exactly what are you talking about, Captain Barbossa?”

“I’m fairly sure it was your impersonation of Jack. We’ve swived, missy. I respect you and even fear you a little, and that’s not something I tell you without grave misgiving. But I do not love you, and you do not love me. Don’t summon the devil through carelessness, Captain Swann. Never use that word again with me.”

Elizabeth’s lips thinned, her eyes narrowed. She shook her head. “Bloody men. Will I go through a lifetime wondering why a man cannot know a woman truly. Or perhaps, won’t know a woman?”

“I know you, missy,” Barbossa clenched his fingers and suppressed the urge to get a pistol in hand.

“You know parts of me, Captain.” Elizabeth’s rebuttal came fast and quietly emphatic. “How many words do you know to describe a storm at sea? Each has a different shade of meaning and truth. So it is with the word you choose to place between us. I believe you wish to imply that I love someone else. And I do. I love Will. I love Jack. And, if you weren’t such a blind man, you’d know I love you. All differently. All equally.”

A twinge above the scar on his heart made him take an involuntary breath. “No pirate ever believes there will be absolutely equal shares, in the end. What we do here is not love, Captain Swann.”

“So a woman who takes more than one man to her bed is -- what? At the best, she’s trying to be a man. At the worst, she’s a common whore.”

“I’ll not win this argument.” Barbossa could see she was as mad as he’d ever seen her. And dead serious. “Although I frequently think you’re trying to be a man, you have virtue to spare.”

“And I’ve said I love you.” She stood, hands on hips, glaring at him fiercely. “And you call me a liar, implying worse.”

“I’m not Will, I’m not Jack.” The hardness in his voice matched the taut anger in his body. “I don’t need to be protected, cajoled or bullied. I’m more your equal than either of them, ‘n that don’t necessarily equate to love, Elizabeth.”

He turned his back on her and lifted the latch.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Ye won’t be choosing words for me. Or fights.”

Barbossa shut the cabin door behind him and cursed his own lack of weather sense. The dream that had come to him earlier in the night was undoubtedly a storm warning.


	3. Beyond the Valley of the Sun

_“What are we lookin’ for?”_

Ragetti stood beside Elizabeth at the rail. Coming straight at them from behind most would have taken the two thin figures for common sailors, one merely cleaner than the other. Elizabeth wore the boy’s breeches and shirt she had worn in Tortuga. Her hair was braided tightly away from her face. A disreputable, floppy-brimmed hat hid her eyes and shaded her nose. Her feet were bare.

“I’m not exactly sure.” Elizabeth half-turned away from Ragetti and glanced over her shoulder. “What are we looking for, Captain Barbossa?”

“Ye’ll smell it before you see it.” Barbossa joined them at the rail. He stared out over the increasingly calm water and took a deep, slow breath.

Elizabeth had apparently stored their argument of the night before away for future dissection, probably saving it for an inopportune and uncomfortable moment. Barbossa winced when he realized he had sighed deeply.

“Soon. I think we’ll find it soon,” he said quickly, and a shade too loudly.

“You said -- an island?”

A flock of seabirds wheeled over the Pearl, then winged away. Barbossa lifted his face and breathed. Yes. He could smell it now, a sickly sweetness washed thin by sea air and water.

“What is that smell?” Elizabeth made a face.

“Land.” Barbossa scanned the horizon in the direction the birds had flown.

“And what is that? Between the sea and sky -- like a vaporous cloud?”

“You’ve good eyes. _Mirare._ It marks the presence of our island as sure as does the smell.”

He guided the Pearl carefully, coming in slowly toward the place of safe anchorage he’d used years before. The odor grew stronger.

“What hides it, Cap’n? A trick of the light? Some kind of fog?” Mr. Gibbs was clearly unhappy with their approach. “You say land is there but I see no evidence . . .”

“Here’s evidence. Drop anchor, Mr. Gibbs.”

They had passed the intangible border of obscurity that surrounded the island. The crew clustered on the rail, chattering with excitement. Jack the Monkey leaped onto Ragetti’s shoulder, seemed to shudder, then ran for the shelter of the nearest hatch.

“Smart lad. Best choice,” Barbossa said in approval.

“It’s beautiful.” Elizabeth joined him near the wheel. “But it smells exceeding unpleasant.”

“There’s good reason for that, girl.”

The horseshoe-shaped bay had not changed over the years. Nor had the riot of brilliant reds, yellows and greens festooning the lower slopes of the two pale, rocky hills that spread from coast to coast. The fine sand that ringed the shoreline was the same brilliant white, sparkling color Barbossa remembered.

“Like a ring o’ice,” Raggetti murmured.

“Or the icing on a wedding cake,” Elizabeth said.

It was time to make the decision he’d been postponing. “I’ll be going ashore with Mr. Gibbs, Captain Swann. You will be --”

“I’m going.”

Of course she would be going with him. “Predictability. That’s not a healthy trait for a pirate to cultivate,” Barbossa muttered. “You’ll need your leather boots, and a machete. I hope you’re prepared to lift and carry.”

She gave him a look.

Barbossa examined the sky. “We should be able to return by nightfall, Mr. Gibbs. If we do not, under no circumstances let anyone follow us. The dangers in this place are not obvious, and not natural. Do not move the Pearl. She will be safe here.”

“Aye.” Gibbs’ acceptance was glum. “Hurry back, Cap’n.”

In addition to a machete for himself, Barbossa gathered two pitch-soaked torches, a lighted cabin lantern, a length of rope and an iron pry bar. Returning to the cabin, he removed his hat, coat and shirt. He fastened his hair at the nape of his neck with a leather string and tied a scarf over his head. A leather vest and double bandolier replaced his shirt. The pistols would be staying, but the more knives he could accommodate in his attire, the better he would feel.

Things on the island were particularly unimpressed by shot, Barbossa remembered grimly.

Elizabeth sat facing him as he rowed to shore. Speculation was plain in the way her eyes shifted between the equipment and his face.

“I’ll tell you when we beach,” he said, just before she opened her mouth.

Approaching the beach it occurred to Barbossa that, as dangerous as the path ahead of them was, Elizabeth was not the worst companion he could have for the retrieval. She wasn’t as strong as one of the men, but undoubtedly more observant, and her reactions were mongoose-quick.

They beached the boat in the white sand. It crunched underfoot, seeming firmer than normal beach sand.

“It’s like crushed shells and rock salt,” Elizabeth said. She dribbled a bit between her fingers.

“As a general rule, be wary of putting hand to anything here.” Barbossa stuck the torches through the back cross-hatch of the bandoliers. “I’ll carry the lantern, you carry the bar in one hand, the machete in the other. Now look around you. Tell me what you see.”

It took her several minutes of concentration. Barbossa watched the fine planes of her face as she slowly evaluated their surroundings.

“The beach is wider here around the bay, and tapers to a thinner strand as it circles the island. Low, flowering shrubs begin abruptly where the beach ends. The shrubs are backed by trees I do not recognize, also covered with flowers that appear to be every color of the rainbow. The flowers must be enormous, they look like women’s hats hanging from the branches.” She turned and frowned. “Is that where the smell comes from? Flowers?”

“It does indeed. And what lies beyond the trees?”

“Solid green and bright splashes of color. I saw two rocky-topped hills as we entered the bay, but I cannot see them from here.”

Barbossa set down the lantern and pulled up the right leg of his breeches. “You’ve seen this scar.” Puckered and laddered the scar marked him from ankle up the length of his calf.

“Yes.”

“Those woods,” Barbossa let the cloth fall back into place. “I got that mark along the path we will travel. I do not wish to see you so marked, so heed every word I say.”

“I always do.” She turned her concentration on him. “Interesting.”

“What?” The hair on his bare arms moved as if a chill wind touched his skin. The expression in her eyes was unnerving.

“You look more like a pirate than ever.” Elizabeth’s voice held a dreamy sound.

“None of that.” He found himself laughing in spite of his discomfort. “Now, follow me and pay heed to all sides. Touch nothing if you can help it, and let nothing touch you.”

It took Barbossa several minutes to find the entrance to the old footpath that led away from the beach. Shrubbery had overgrown the faint trail. He motioned Elizabeth to stay back. He set to work with his machete, creating an opening wide enough so two might walk abreast if necessary. The barrier of shrubs was barely three arm’s length deep.

The green smell of butchered leaf and wood momentarily overpowered the island’s primary odor.

Elizabeth followed him through the opening.

“Oh! It’s as if the forest has been decorated for a lawn party. How gorgeous!”

Even knowing the reality of the rioting mass of exuberantly colored flora, Barbossa could agree with her. The flowers that hung from creepers and grew attached to the trunks of massive old trees were like living jewels. Colors both saturated and transparent, of every imaginable hue, burned their image upon the eye if one stared at them for too long.

“Beautiful. And deadly, every one.”

A golden butterfly the size of a dinner plate glided down through tree branches to land with delicate, finicky care on the outer petals of an enormous orchid-shaped flower. It dipped its tongue into the flower’s center, cleaned its legs, then launched itself back into the air.

With a sound like the crack of a pistol, a tendril of creeper snapped the butterfly out of the air, into the center of another, larger flower. The flower’s petals closed tightly, hiding the flailing butterfly from sight.

“Carnivorous,” Elizabeth murmured. “How extraordinary.”

“The larger flowers eat birds,” Barbossa said bluntly. “That smell seems to be a combination of bait, and the odor produced by their digestive juices. The creepers have razor-sharp thorns and limited mobility. If we walk into a place where there’s sufficient quantity of them, there’s every chance of being incapacitated and bled dry under the roots of those beautiful flowers.”

“Will they attack us?”

“From my limited experience, I cannot tell you what they’re capable of. We precipated the confrontation that resulted in my scar. Best to anticipate any possibility, and act according.” Barbossa considered the faint trail ahead. “The wounds left by the creeper thorns, and several varieties of grasses we will encounter further down the trail, are slow to clot and close. Try not to get scratched. Do not hestitate to use the machete, and stay close to me.”

It was eerily quiet under the canopy of leaf and flower. What made the silence even more disturbing was that, although no wind penetrated the canopy, plantlife they passed was in constant, gentle motion. Barbossa walked slowly, holding the machete at the ready. Gradually the smell seemed to clog his lungs and leave an unpleasant taste on his tongue.

More butterflies filtered through the greenery, indigo, lime green and brilliant orange insects, some larger than the first golden butterfly they had seen devoured. Barbossa noticed them out of the corner of his eyes, landing and leaving, or landing and disappearing, but he kept his focus on the lichen-covered trail.

“Barbossa.” Elizabeth tugged on the back of his vest. “Turn around and look behind me. I’ll keep my eyes ahead of you.”

Barbossa turned slowly to face her. Stepping forward he closed the space between their bodies and nudged her until they stood sideways on the trail. Barely ten steps down the path they had just traveled three of the huge flowers dangled from green ropes, hovering an arm’s length above head level. In varying hues of waxy pink tipped with deeper reds, the flowers’ bulbous shape and pursed petals looked unnervingly like featureless heads.

“Not today, my lovelies.” Extending the machete, Barbossa held the metal blade close to the nearest flower. It moved a hair closer, then contracted all its petals into a tight ball and withdrew. “They know the scent of keen metal. Walk in front of me for a bit.”

Elizabeth slid around him. It was a deliberate, full contact movement.

“Mind on business, Swann.” His reaction to her nearness was becoming a difficulty, almost an embarrassment. Barbossa watched her walk ahead of him and knew his heart beat faster. His eyes lingered on the line of her neck and the single golden braid, which swayed as she walked. It would be a simple matter to step up behind her and take one of those soft earlobes into his mouth . . .

“It’s so lovely.” Elizabeth’s words drifted back over her shoulder, uncharacteristically languid. “So lovely here.”

“Beshrew it.” Barbossa stole a quick glance over his back and his reverie concerning Elizabeth’s better parts was firmly dispelled. A dozen of the flowers now dangled closely behind them. “It’s the flowers. Pick up your pace. We’re getting close to the rock now.”

Elizabeth stumbled, her usually sure feet momentarily awkward. Barbossa reached to steady her, and heard a purposeful rustling behind them.

“Move quickly,” he said against the curve of her neck.

There had been no opportunity to learn of the plants’ drug-like effect the last time he walked the path. Daft George Goody had tried to pick one of those blossoms, and the creepers had retaliated. Only strenuous application of their machetes enabled them to win free of the forest. Exercise and pain must have negated the impact of the fragrance.

“Yo, ho, ho,” Elizabeth sang. She began to skip and wave her machete in an alarming manner.

Another quick glance behind revealed a dozen of the flowers hanging almost within arm’s reach. Ahead the tunnel of trees opened and thinned. Barbossa gritted his teeth and followed as quickly as he dared over the increasingly rock-strewn path.

“A pirate’s life for me.” Clear of the forest, Elizabeth sat on a boulder in a field of grey stone, kicked her heels and sang. “As treasure hunts go, this is exotic enough, but somewhat tame.”

“An inexact description,” Barbossa took a deep breath and shivered in spite of the heat. “Exotic and portentous would be more apt.”

Elizabeth slid off the rock. “You look to be a completely different man without your hat and coat. Whittled down to the essentials -- in scarf and vest, leather and knives. You look more obviously dangerous.” She twirled and laughed, giddier than he’d ever seen her under the influence of rum.

“Breathe the fresh air deep, Swann.” Barbossa placed the lantern carefully on the ground and looked around. He could feel a fog blow off his own mind. Damnable things.

“A fine pirate, indeed.”

His arms were suddenly full of Elizabeth. The machete dropped to the ground.

It was like the first time he’d kissed her, wild and deep. Barbossa slipped one hand under her shirt and followed the line of her ribs to a breast. Mouth, jaw, earlobe, he savored the way her skin tasted. She tasted him back, with enthusiasm. Gradually her eyes lost their dazed expression and filled with a look he had come to know. A look he had come to anticipate.

“Steady. This ain’t the place.” She was more mind-clouding than a forest of unnatural, flesh-eating plants, Barbossa thought, deeply irritated at the part of him that proclaimed it certainly was the place.

Elizabeth laughed. “A sound judgment.” She kissed him quickly on the mouth, her tongue sliding over his lower lip. “I’d most likely break your back among these boulders, old pirate.”

“D’ya think to always be . . .”

“Barbossa!”

Pain burned across his upper arm at the same instant he heard a noise like the cracking of a whip. A small red line appeared on Elizabeth’s cheekbone even as he spun to place her behind the shelter of his body.

“I’ll be returnin’ with fire, and toast every shite-eatin’ one of you.” He bent and scooped the machete into his hand, looking back into the forest.

Hundreds of bright, bobbing bulbs dangled along the edge of the forest. A mass of green, snake-like creepers roiled across the scant space of barren stone between the forest’s edge and where they stood.

“That hurt.”

There was the sound of metal striking rock, and a resounding hiss. Elizabeth was not the kind of woman to shelter behind a man when there was a sharp weapon handy. Severed creepers spasmed and retreated to the forest, leaking thin orange ichor as they went. The chopped bits still squirmed and undulated at her feet.

“Get the bar and follow me.” Barbossa retrieved the lantern. “There’s a bit of climb now, but nothing unexpected. At least there wasn’t last time I was here.”

“Captain Barbossa.”

The formal tone of her voice brought him around in surprise. Elizabeth met his eyes, chin in the air. Blood trickled over her cheek but she made no move to wipe it away.

“I won’t fail you again. My actions were foolishly dangerous.” She looked back toward the forest as she finished, griping her machete with purpose.

“Aye. But give yourself some slack. The plants --”

“Did not affect you as strongly,” she said, shaking her head.

“There’s a bit more of me than there is of you, Swann.” Barbossa brushed the trail of blood off her cheek with his thumb, then wiped it on her sleeve. “You did well. My last companion on this trail was leaking far more blood than you at this point.”

Elizabeth evaluated his statement, then nodded slowly. “Perhaps. But I am on my guard now, and should have been since you warned me of the dangers here.”

Something deep within Barbossa stirred uncomfortably. “I’ve no doubt there will be opportunity to remind you of that sentiment.”

They stood at the cleft between the island’s two hills. The ancient path followed the curve of the hill that dominated the northeastern portion of the island. Winding in a slow semi-circle, always upward in direction, the way led between tumbles of boulder and rock.

Barbossa turned and looked back at the forest. They hadn’t gained much altitude, but the forest rolled below like a great lawn, alive with dancing butterflies. Just beyond the edge of the greenery the black spires of the Pearl could be glimpsed.

“I can just see the tips of the Pearl’s masts, she’s not really that far away. And it’s hazy beyond her.” Elizabeth’s eyes turned toward the sky. “The haze continues above us, as well. I did not notice before, but if you stare you can see it dance, like midday sun off black rock. Do you have any notion as to what causes the effect?”

“I do not. We need to keep moving if we wish to return before day’s end. There’s water just ahead. I’d welcome a drink.”

It was as he remembered. A jog upward, between a pair of weathered oval boulders, and the sound of splashing water filled the air. A shower of water spilled over a higher rock rim overhead, then disappeared between weather-beaten stone rubble. Vibrant green grass grew around the dampness, some clumps knee-high.

“You’ll want to avoid that grass when you can. Each leaf is like a saw blade.” Barbossa heard her snort of disgust. “There’s a basin above where it’s safe to drink.”

“Safe? I wonder if there’s anything safe in this place,” Elizabeth grumbled, bending slightly to inspect the grass. “I see. It doesn’t come after you, does it?"

“It didn’t before.”

Another short climb and the path leveled off to its former gentle incline. The natural stone basin nestled into a nook of solid rock. Water bubbled and surged from the bottom of the pool, then spilled over the rock edge they had viewed from below.

Barbossa bent and drank first. The water was as sweet as he remembered. “Drink.’

Elizabeth took a long drink, then lay her hat aside and splashed water over her face. She smiled up at him, shaking drops from her lashes and nose. “Here’s another story you owe me. How you came to find this island, and what you know of it.”

“Aye. You’ll hear it. Perhaps sooner than I’d like to tell it.” It seemed that all his most important stories started with death, mostly death delivered by his own hand. He sat down beside her awkwardly. The climb was taking a toll on his leg.

“Tales have power, and unexpected consequences. I’ve read many and told few.” He reached to smooth the water off her chin. “The larger tale ended when we sank the Endeavour. The last page turned. We don’t realize it fully yet, but the world we knew when we were young men has plunged over the precipice. Power shifts, men of science expose the secrets of the Gods. The Brethren, men like Jack and me, we’re only in the prologue of the tale that follows. As the poet said, we are _past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, and quickly come where the spirits dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils._ ”

“I refuse to accept that.” Elizabeth slapped his hand away. “The seas --”

“May be ours again for a time. But it will be a short time. No matter.” Barbossa studied her gravely. “I think even a short time is more than I deserve.” He untied his scarf, dipped it in the water, wrung it out then tied it back into place.

“Time to get moving, girl. We’ve a cave to locate, and a treasure to find.”


	4. Up Narrow Path

_“From here on it’s a steeper climb.”_

Barbossa paused before entering the deep cleft of splintered rock through which the path led. Below in the distance he could see more of the Pearl and the harbor. The haze softened her starkly beautiful dark lines into something an artist might sketch.

“She looks like a charcoal drawing.” Elizabeth’s hand rested briefly on his bare arm. “Everywhere I look there is so much beauty, and so much danger.”

Lessons to be drawn from nature, Barbossa thought darkly.

He led the way upward. His leg throbbed insistently, reminding him anew of just how old he was. Elizabeth seemed indefatigable. Eventually the trail appeared to end in a spacious natural ampitheatre-shaped depression near the hill’s summit.

Barbossa took a torch from his bandolier and lit it on the lantern's flame. He handed the torch to Elizabeth. “You can lead now, if you’ve a mind.”

“Lead where? Where do we go from here?” She took the torch, frowning crossly at his raised eyebrow. “Sometimes I want to . . .”

“Drive something pointed into me chest?”

The look that plainly crossed her face, defiance, guilt and mulish resolve, made him throw back his head and laugh. “It’s a very small mystery, girl.”

With a look of condescending superiority Elizabeth stepped close to the rock face. Keeping the pry bar in contact with rock, she began to slowly follow the curving surface, simultaneously inspecting her surroundings above and below. Barbossa knew the moment she found the entrance to the cave. Her face lit with understanding. Taking another step she turned her back to him and disappeared.

She was back in a moment, smug and excited. “Hidden in plain sight! There’s a tunnel behind. Come on!”

Barbossa found himself unable to move. The pain in his leg receded, probably due to the rush of blood to his groin. When she got focused and excited, or when she fought, Elizabeth was like high wind and high seas -- a force of nature that challenged something raw and primitive in him. His body suggested, urgently, that he take her standing where she was, back against the rock.

“Are you coming?” Elizabeth turned and vanished again.

“Directly behind you.” Barbossa hobbled after her. As he edged into the sunless narrow between rock walls a vivid memory of the last time he’d seen Will Turner fully alive, holding Elizabeth bent backward in a kiss, replayed itself with astounding immediacy. Barbossa closed his eyes and made the image drift away. Just as quickly Jack’s face replaced the newlyweds. Sparrow stood near the rail of the Pearl as Elizabeth rowed to what would be both wedding night and wake. His face was expressionless, his usually mobile mouth and eyes almost perfectly still. Jack shrugged, turned away from the rail and caught Barbossa watching him. He’d shrugged again, jaw set as if against the toothache.

When the time came and he faced Elizabeth’s men, Barbossa wondered what he would see in their eyes, and what they would see in his.

“Barbossa!”

Impatient wench. Holding his torch as high as the low ceiling would permit, Barbossa entered the tunnel.

Earth-cooled air welled up from far below. It carried a sharp mineral and salt odor and hint of dampness. It was a pleasant change from the sickly sweetness of the forest.

Elizabeth stood by the first of the paintings. Her eyes were wide, her mouth shaped in an _oh_ of astonishment.

 _Save us!_ The echo of George Goody’s voice floated across intervening years, audible only to Barbossa. _Here be monsters!_

“Are they monsters?” Elizabeth’s fingers stopped just short of touching the paintings.

“Monsters. Gods. Gods who are monsters. Monsters who are men.” Barbossa examined the pale lozenges of rock, incised into the spark-flecked stone then transformed with an artist’s palette of earthen tones. Creatures who, he fundamentally doubted, ever walked upon the shore of any sea he’d ever heard of, proliferated in feathered, taloned, many-limbed and extravagantly-toothed variety. “This is but the first of many on the way. Newest here, oldest below. In between -- a few unusual interments.”

“What are they? They make me feel . . .”

“Savage and bizarre?”

“Young and insignificant. This is a glimpse of an amazing history and world I could never have imagined.” Her voice was husky with wonder. “Growing up, pirates were the most wonderful and exotic creatures I could imagine. Then dead men came walking, a monster arose from the sea, and every tenet of my religion was thrown into disarray by the reality of a heathen Goddess. You say our world is changing, and that may be true.” Elizabeth’s finger stabbed toward the depiction of a magnificent feathered beast rending the flesh from a prone figure. “Every history has horror, triumph, resolution and change.”

“Although perhaps not in that order,” Barbossa muttered. He regretted the comment instantly, when she shot him a look of tolerant affection.

“I once heard a man tell my father over port and cigars that nature’s only immutable law is _adapt or die._ Which course sounds better to an old pirate?”

Barbossa bit his tongue. He had learned to choose which of her baits was worth striking. They continued down the tunnel. Elizabeth followed the paintings closely, darting back and forth to either side so she would not miss any of the extraordinary representations. When they came to the first of the sealed vaults, she stopped and stared.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?” Barbossa eyed the shallow alcove, as big round as the top of a water barrel, neatly fitted with a stone that bore a single decoration painted in its center. The subdued red symbol looked as clean and fresh as it had the first time he’d seen it.

“Somehow I don’t think it’s treasure.” Her words came quiet, almost a whisper. “Do you suppose they left their dead?”

“Aye. I did years ago. But it could just as well be magical accoutrements, or any number of other explanations.” The air was comfortably cool now, and easy to breathe. Fresh. “Tell me what you smell.”

“The sea.” Her attention diverted from the alcoves, Elizabeth looked downwards. The light of their torches brought a myriad of sparkling colors from the tunnel walls. “How far down have we come?”

“We’re nearing sea level.”

“And nothing’s tried to eat us.” Elizabeth’s eyes seemed to absorb the torchlight and reflect it back in a look of honey-gold amusement. “What’s waiting in the basement, Captain?”

“A skeleton,” Barbossa said reluctantly. “There’s always a skeleton in the basement.”

Her eyes turned from honey to molasses. “Show me.”

“First things first. There are more paintings.”

The passage narrowed and dropped as they approached sea level. Although still flecked with the sparkling white stone, the general consistency of the tunnel walls became smoother. When the first of what Barbossa remembered as the _sea monsters_ appeared, he found himself watching her face.

She had looked like this as a child, he thought. Full of wonder and awe, full of pushing, demanding curiousity. Weatherby Swann must have had his hands full, to raise her alone.

“It’s a completely different style. Simpler, yet richer!” Elizabeth was finally unable to prevent herself from touching the walls. “Do you suppose any of them were real?”

Rollicking, lithesome sea creatures scrolled across the stone canvas, daubed in brilliant blues, greens, reds and yellows. Creatures with arching necks and mammoth, membranous wings, fins as large as sails, jutting teeth like a thicket of swords. There were sailing crafts, fashioned like nothing Barbossa could imagine crossing open water, with enormous curved prows and rounded, covered decks. And there were people standing against a great line of mountains. Their eyes were drawn with slanted curlicues. All their noses were long and beaked, and the women’s breasts were very large.

“If they were real, it was in a time so remote that their reality scarcely matters. Calypso might know somewhat on the question.”

“The older I get, the greater number of mysteries I perceive in this world. I wonder if Calypso would talk to me, tell me . . .” Elizabeth’s lips set in a stern, unhappy line. “I’d really like to have a talk with Calypso.”

“Ye might try asking, sometime,” Barbossa said. He felt a decidedly unnatural, unwanted urge to extend comfort. “She had no quarrel against you.”

"Or with Will?" Silence stretched between them.

“Come then. We’re almost there.” Barbossa stepped past her. Another thirty steps and the tunnel’s ceiling swept into a high, vaulting space. Another twenty steps and he stood where the tunnel ended.

The cairn of rock atop a wide rounded stone just inside the cavern appeared to be no different than he’d left it. Barbossa sat his lantern next to the rock, lit the second torch and wedged it into the cairn. He made a quick survey of the rest of the area. It seemed unchanged by the years.

Shelves of black stone shot with rose quartz and jadeite fell away from the tunnel's mouth, leading down to an expanse of water that filled most of the oblong-shaped cavern. Torchlight sparked from the same grainy stone that comprised the walls of the tunnel they’d traversed. Runnels of rock, like the remains of melted candles, hung from the ceiling. Richly somber garnet-hues glowed as the flickering light of their torches illuminated the uneven formations.

“The treasure is here?” Elizabeth walked to the edge of the pool. She examined the rock formations, then peered into the water. Her torch dipped lower, close to the surface of the pool. “Ah. The skeleton. Your work, Captain Barbossa?”

He didn’t have to tell her the whole story. A simple _pirate_ would probably have sufficed. “His name was Daft George Goody. He helped me carry the chest to this place, then I shot him and placed his body to guard what I left.”

“Why?” She held his eyes gravely, simply. “One murderer to another. This is a story you planned to tell me.”

“Aye.” There had never been any hope of escaping it. “Sit with me.”

Elizabeth wedged her torch beside his. They sat on a ledge halfway between the cavern’s mouth and the water. The liquid surface was nearly still, a soft matte darkness that hid George Goody’s remains from their vantage.

“I’ve killed, Swann. In fights -- mostly fair, but I never considered fairness mandatory. At sea, to win a prize or protect m’self, m’ship or my men, life is a cheap commodity. Plentiful, inexhaustible. I’ve seen you fight. You know the answer to the question: who should survive? is always -- _me_.” Barbossa looked around the cavern. “I never thought to share this with any living soul.”

“Tell me.” Elizabeth’s voice was nearly a whisper. “My heart is sick with the weight of decisions made in solitude.”

Barbossa took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. He regretted the gesture as soon as he released her hand. “Well, then," he said gruffly, clearing his throat. "Before I first met Jack Sparrow, or saw the Black Pearl, but after I took the title of Pirate Lord from the hand of a dead man, I spent some time on land, pursuing entertainments much loved by seamen . . .”

“And men generally,” Elizabeth interrupted. “Drunken debauchery, general lewdness, sloth and the breaking of every commandment you had the opportunity and energy to break.”

“What else was there to do?” Barbossa laughed at her. “I had men around me who knew the title I held. I had no ship of me own, but opportunities were not lacking for ventures and adventures. Daft George Goody was one of the men around me.

“One night as we sat in a low tavern and listened to the tale of Morgan and the march on Panama, a man approached us. Crew was needed for a sure endeavor. A Spaniard bearing great riches could be won, if we were willing.

“And we were willing.” Barbossa sighed. Their blood had run high at the offer. Spanish acquisitions were envied and vied for among privateers and pirates. “We accepted the offer, and were told where to ship out in two day’s time. Later the same night I stumbled back to the room I kept at a nearby tavern and fell into a drunken sleep. I woke before daylight, thinking someone had called my name. When I opened my eyes, a slight dark woman was seated on my seachest. Her eyes were black as tar. I looked deep into those eyes, and I saw death.”

“Calypso?”

“No. She was no goddess, but a mother.” Man sinned as inexhaustibly as he reproduced, Barbossa thought. “And perhaps a woman of great power and knowledge. She offered me a simple trade. Success against the Spaniard, great riches, and a secret way to safeguard those riches if I would kill the man responsible for taking her daughter’s life.”

“George Goody?”

“Mmm.” Barbossa gave her a sideways glance. “I can’t think your father told you of the dangers inherent in bedding pirates on a regular basis.”

“Getting with child? Disease?” Elizabeth looked momentarily uncomfortable. “The maids were great sources of information.”

“Did they tell you of the practice of buying black virgins to lay with, if you are a man with the pox, sufficient money to buy a slave, and sufficient indifference to pass your sickness on to an innocent victim?”

“No.” Elizabeth pulled slightly away. “What madness is this?”

“As cruel and impossible as the practice seems, there may be some reason it exists. A man with the pox who contracts a fever carried by many of the slaves may find himself recovered of the pox.”

“But the woman -- he would pass his disease on to her.”

“Yes. Daft George Goody was one of these men. He had no coin to buy a woman, so raped one.”

She was silent, leaning forward to stare at the water. “Her mother wanted revenge.”

“Revenge. And the surety that Daft George would not continue to seek out black virgins.”

“And you accepted her offer.”

“I did.” Without a second thought. Goody’s behavior was noxious, and the Spaniard a prize worth killing for with less reason. “We looted and sank the ship, although at great cost. In the disarray that followed I acquired a battered, leaky barque and the chest. With a scant crew, Daft George among them, I sailed in search of the place of safeguard I had been promised. When we found the island, George Goody rowed ashore with me. We made it through the forest, to this very cavern. He helped me place the chest in yonder pool. And then I shot him through the heart.”

“I would have shot him without the promise of treasure.”

Barbossa tapped his chest. “I believe that.”

Elizabeth made an indelicate sound of derision. “What do we do now?”

As easy as that, it was. Barbossa felt tension he didn’t know he’d been holding drain from his shoulders.

“There’s a slab of rock under the skeleton. The chest is under that. I’ll have to pry the rock up and fasten rope to the chest. Then we pull it up.”

Elizabeth stood purposefully. “Let’s get started.”

 

Nothing is as easy as the plan makes it seem, Barbossa thought as he surfaced for air. Daft George’s bones lay in a new place, but the shelf of rock refused to be shifted.

“Every time you pry it up, it moves, then settles back.” Elizabeth hovered at water’s edge, holding a torch high. “It took two of you to place it, it’s going to take both of us to shift it.”

“You can swim?”

“Enough to do this.” She removed her boots, then stripped off shirt and breeches. Her single undergarment was a sleeveless, abbreviated chemise that floated just at the junction of her upper thighs, leaving a patch of golden hair exposed as she walked.

Barbossa let himself float and enjoy the view as she joined him in the water. Without her torch aloft the water was darker, but still navigable. It took them four dives, but the combination of pry bar and extra hands produced the desired result. They managed to shift the slab to one side and reveal the chest beneath. It took Barbossa another three dives to break the suction under the chest by heaving on the pry bar, and a single dive to fasten the rope securely around the chest.

Even with the combination of their hands on the rope the chest baulked at returning to the surface world. But slowly, reluctantly the sea-soaked piece of wood and lead lurched from deeper water to bang its way up the rock shelving at the pool’s shallow end. Barbossa waded in and, with an effort, lifted it free. The chest seemed as heavy as two barrels of rum. He carried it several steps away from the water, then let it down near the cairn where their torches burned.

“Heavier than I remember it.” Salt water ran from his beard and hair, down his bare arms and chest. “Well done.”

“What’s inside?” The chest drew her. Still clad only in the wet chemise, Elizabeth bent over to inspect their salvage.

The movement afforded Barbossa an unparalleled view of her dripping, naked breasts and limbs. “Treasure.”

Her wet braid dangled over her shoulder, gleaming like dull copper in the torchlight. Barbossa stepped behind her, loosened the belt on his breeches and let them fall in a sodden mass around his feet. He took hold of her waist just above her hips and pulled her upright, back against him.

“Oh. Yes.” Elizabeth held her arms over her head to allow removal of her chemise. The wet, sheer fabric stuck to her like a second skin.

Impatient, Barbossa ripped the garment from her body. She laughed, and tried to turn in his arms. He held her tightly, preventing the movement.

“I’ll be steering this time, Captain Swann.”

Elizabeth made an incoherent sound of protest. “Let me . . .”

“No.” In the cooler air of the cavern her body seemed to radiate a gentle heat. “I’m not a man given to much whimsy or fantastical notions, but it’s easy to understand why Sao Feng mistook you for a goddess.” His tongue and mouth followed the line of her neck across her shoulder blade. One hand cupped a breast, the other rested on her stomach. He pressed his cock against her body and felt gentle heat turn to fire. “He was wrong, of course. Mostly.”

“Please.” Elizabeth squirmed, trying to reach behind her to touch him. "I want to face you."

“Bend. Grab hold of the chest.” Barbossa pushed gently against her back and nudged her legs apart with his knee. He ran his hands over the line of her spine, over the rondure of her hips and small, flat buttocks. She shuddered and widened her stance.

“Are you awaiting an invitation, old pirate?”

“You are as impatient as a goddess.” He slid the flat of his hand between her legs and felt her move against his touch. “This may take a bit longer. Let me know what you need.” The length of him went into her, like sliding into a velvet glove greased with warm butter and honey. She pushed back against his hardness and tightened.

“Good. So good.” Elizabeth tried to straighten. “I want to see your face.”

Barbossa thrust against her, hard, and her hands grabbed at the chest for balance. “No. Shut your eyes. Feel instead of see.” He thrust again, slow and deep. Elizabeth let out a scream like a frustrated cat in heat.

“I take it the angle’s good for you?” Barbossa forced himself to be still inside her. His hand followed the curve of her stomach down to the soft place where they joined. He let his beard and lips tickle her skin as he bent and whispered against the small of her back. “That was lovely. I think I’m finished.”

“Liar!” Elizabeth bucked underneath him. “Stop talking, damn you. Take me properly, or . . .”

All in all, Barbossa was glad he hadn’t taken her in this fashion aboard ship. Perhaps it was the excellent acoustics in the cave that magnified -- or even encouraged -- Elizabeth’s vocalizing. The first time she came he paused until the echoes died away, and the contractions around his cock stopped. She quieted under him. Amazed and proud that he hadn’t lost control at the same moment, Barbossa smoothed his hands over her damp skin, brushing against her erect nipples.

“Still want to turn around?”

Her frame stiffened. “Yes. That was lovely, but I think I’m quite finished.”

Barbossa laughed. “Liar.” He moved into her with fast, deliberate strokes, feeling as if he was a young man once more. She was quiet and accepting at first, then adjusted her hands on the chest and tilted her backside further into the air. Glancing down, Barbossa saw she strained on tiptoe to meet him.

It was too much. The sight of her, the feel of her, the primal sounds of pleasure they both made sent him out of control. Two, three more strokes and, God help him, it felt like he emptied the essence of his soul into hers.

When the echoes died away and his breathing was some semblance of normal, Barbossa slipped from her body and helped her stand. She turned in his arms and placed her cheek against his chest.

“Bloody pirate.” Elizabeth reached up and pulled on his earring, making a face at him. “You’ve done that with a woman before, I’d wager.”

“But never with a goddess.” His mouth found hers. Elizabeth threw her arms around his neck and returned the kiss fiercely. “Get dressed now. Time to get the blasted, cursed heavy chest back to the beach.”

“Remove the contents, and leave the chest here.” Her voice came muffled as she bent to pull on her breeches.

Two small stones rattled and hopped over higher ledges to land at his feet. Barbossa casually picked up his wet breeches, pulled them on, then reached for his vest.

“That may not be necessary. Hello, Ja-ack. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”


	5. Split My Soul In Two

Jack Sparrow stepped into the torch light with hair awry and eyes more smudged than ever. Gold glinted off his teeth, which were bared in a gesture that could have been smile, grimace or snarl.

“Jack.”

Elizabeth said his name without particular inflection. Barbossa badly wanted to get a look at her face, but decided it would be unwise to take his eyes off the pistol that appeared to be pointed directly between his legs. He slipped into his vest, slowly, and leaned back against the rock that held their torches.

“Never say those charts led you here, Jack.”

“I want to shoot you. I’d like to shoot you. Several of me is jumping up and down and demandin’ I shoot you.”

Jack’s hand flexed on the grip of his pistol. He sounded crazed, but Barbossa had never seen a colder, more calculating expression in the depths of Sparrow’s black regard.

“What’s stoppin’ you?” Barbossa kept eye contact. “I took the Pearl, you took the maps. I’d say we’re still sitting even on the scales, Jack.”

“Even?” The pistol trembled, then stilled. “The only thing that prevents me from killing you this moment is that I’m still struggling with the urge to stick something pointed through my ears and claw my eyes from my head.”

“Hand him a knife, Captain Barbossa. I don’t think his pistol will serve either of those ends.” Elizabeth stepped up next to him, tying the belt on her breeches. From the corner of his eye Barbossa could see her face was flushed, but composed.

Barbossa felt a laugh build deep in his chest and choked it back. Chances were good he was going to die, again, but there would be entertainments first.

“Elizabeth. It is Elizabeth, innit? I only ask because the caterwaulin’ that led me through that highly decorated glowy passage seemed to indicate that a French bawdyhouse had been mysteriously relocated on an uninhabited and treacherous bit of land which is, granted, rather far removed from any other French bawdyhouse I know to exist.” Jack paused and waved the pistol for emphasis. “You look like ‘Lizbeth . . . although I’ve never seen ‘Lizbeth’s lovely arse tilted heavenward enjoying carnal ministrations. You sound like ‘Lizbeth, although -- again -- I’ve never heard ‘Lizbeth shrieking like a . . .”

“Be very careful, Jack.”

“Let him speak. He thinks my arse is lovely.” Elizabeth did not sound like a woman complimented. “Put the pistol down, Jack. It’s not your place to disapprove of what you inadvertently witnessed.”

“Not my place. Not my place.” Jack tilted his head back and regarded her through half-closed eyes. “Shall I leave it to Will, then, to ask why his wife is gettin’ herself diddled by an old, mutinous . . .”

“Yes. Ask Will.” Elizabeth moved into Jack’s line of fire and closed the distance between them with quick steps. “Run away again, find Will, tell him his widow is still alive, and doing what living women do.” Her finger stabbed near his nose. “Shoot me or put the pistol down. Now.”

Three-quarters of Jack’s face, looking uncharacteristically grim and sober, was visible behind Elizabeth’s intervening body. Barbossa felt a pang of undefinable emotion shiver through him. He knew -- had known all along -- that Sparrow would react badly to Elizabeth’s choice to leave the Cove, and even more badly to her choice of bedmates. Jack’s opinion mattered not a whit to him, but Elizabeth . . . during the passage to Singapore it became obvious to Barbossa how important Jack Sparrow was to Elizabeth Swann. Will had seen it too, and been unable to understand.

The pistol wavered, then dropped to Jack’s side.

“Give it to me.” Elizabeth took the weapon then stood for a long minute, holding Jack’s gaze in silence. “Sit. I’m going down to the pool and wash.”

“Good.” Jack said bluntly. “You smell like . . .”

A solid cuff to the ear cut him off. “You have no right.” Her voice shook with fury. “You will sit. You will not attempt to kill Barbossa. After I wash, we will talk.”

Elizabeth stalked away, taking the pistol with her. Across the very empty space, Barbossa met Jack’s eyes.

“Whatever was done, was done by her own will and desire,” Barbossa said softly.

“Ah. So it’s all right, then.” Jack sank into a sitting position as if his legs could no longer support him. His eyes went past Barbossa toward the small noises Elizabeth made at the pool.

“How’d you find us? The compass?”

“I thought I was following the map. It was my clear intention and desire to follow the map and find the Spaniard’s elixir. There I was, in another leaking dinghy, making rather good time. Yes, I consulted the compass. Somewhere ‘twixt there and here things went awry. Once again.” Jack pulled the compass from his belt, looked at it briefly then threw it away with a violent jerk of his hand. “Bugger.”

“What did you mean about the glowing passage?” Elizabeth plucked the compass neatly from the air as she joined them. “You don’t have a torch or lantern. You came down here without light?”

“And the flowers? How’d you make it through the forest unscathed?” Barbossa asked. There was no obvious sign that Jack had experienced the friendly embrace of hungry flora.

Jack shuddered. “Nasty things took me hat.” He looked between them. “I’ve got questions of me own. About this stinking island and yonder chest. About why you’re here, Elizabeth, apparently a victim of mental instability . . .”

Barbossa opened his mouth.

“Stop.”

There was a depth of weariness and pain underlying Elizabeth’s voice. The hurt had barely shown over the screen of intimacy he’d developed with her in the last few days. But it was there, and raw. Jack’s face changed. Barbossa knew he’d heard the same pain.

Elizabeth sat down near Jack, but not too near, positioned between the two of them. “I will give you my answers first.

“After Will left on the Dutchman the two of you left me at Shipwreck Cove, without a fare-thee-well between you. From Mr. Gibbs I know that both of you sailed the Pearl to Tortuga. Once there, Barbossa steals the Pearl from under your nose -- will you ever learn, Jack? -- not knowing that Sao Feng’s map was now in your possession. So Barbossa has a ship but no map, and Jack has a map but no ship . . . which isn’t as much a handicap to Jack as it might be to another man.”

Jack grinned and nodded. “Too kind.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Jack takes someone’s dinghy, his acquired map, and leaves Mr. Gibbs on the dock. After several days there are reasons Mr. Gibbs feels it best to end his stay on Tortuga. He returns to Shipwreck Cove, at which time I persuade him to assist me in returning to Tortuga.”

“A torturous tale. I feel like I’m running back and forth on the Pearl again,” Jack muttered.

“Barbossa also returns to Tortuga. upon the realization that his treasure quest has been cannonballed by Jack’s theft, so was there with the Pearl when Mr. Gibbs and I arrive.”

Jack seemed to whisper at his braids. “Apparently I am of two minds about knowing what happened at that point,” he said finally. “I may be here because the bloody compass led me back to the Pearl. And I see what is most certainly a treasure chest, so I’m guessin’ it’s the reason Barbossa is here.”

“The Pearl.” Barbossa shook his head. “The compass led you to the Pearl? There’s nothing you want more than the Black Pearl, is there?”

“Apparently not.” The words sounded sulky. “What is in the chest, by the way?”

“So the compass led you to the Pearl and the island.” Elizabeth ignored Jack’s question.

“Nearly ran straight into her. Interesting. Whole stinkin’ place is nigh invisible until you’re right on it. Mr. Gibbs was glad to see me, at least. He said, if I saw you, to mention that the new crew you picked up in Tortuga was gettin’ restless without you there. Something about the island disturbed them greatly.” Jack favored Barbossa with a smirk. “Hard to find good crew.”

“You followed the trail from the beach?” The men Jack referred to were probably a group of four stout Africans, new to the Pearl the day he’d abandoned Jack and Gibbs.

“There wasn’t an alternative route.”

“And the flowers?” Elizabeth asked. “They didn’t bother you?”

“Well . . . there was a lad, one of those disaffected crewmen in fact, who insisted on accompanying me for reconnoiter.” Jack buffed one of his rings against a ragged sleeve. “You might say he created a diversion.”

“You escaped as the flowers ate him.” Barbossa laughed. “Very fortuitous. I thought you said it was hard to find good crew.”

“Be hard to find him now, at any rate. When I came to the end of the trail I thought I heard a flock of birds on the edge of a squall. Followed the sound, found the tunnel. Followed the sound through the tunnel, past the pictures that glow, down to the horrible vision . . .”

“You said that before,” Elizabeth interrupted, “about glowing pictures.”

“Odd an’ interesting things. Beasties an’ such. One looked very much like the kraken.” Jack stood and walked down to the pool. He regarded the water with an appraising eye. “Skeleton. Someone you once served under, Captain Barbossa?”

Barbossa rolled his eyes. “We’re wastin’ time here. We need to get back to the Pearl.” A general uneasiness and irritation grew to something more substantial. Loss of temper, loss of control, one of them joining Daft George on eternal watch -- all were real possibilities. “Jack can help me carry the chest. Captain Swann can hold the torches and incinerate anything that attempts to interfere with our departure.”

“Still Captain Swann, is it?” Jack stretched lazily. “S’all right by me, as long as I get a cut of the goods.”

“I agree, we need to get back to the Pearl. But first I want to see the paintings in the dark.” Without waiting for response, Elizabeth stalked out of the cavern.

“Go with her,” Jack said, inspecting the outside of the chest. “I’ve seen them.”

“Don’t touch the chest, Jack.” As warnings went, it was weak and Barbossa knew it. He followed Elizabeth into the tunnel, silently enumerating ways Jack Sparrow might meet his final, final end. “Wait for me. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.”

“I am.” There was just enough light from the cavern behind to see an impression of her face. It looked drained, emotionless. “Jack is far angrier than I thought he would be.”

“And I thought he took it better than he might have.” Barbossa patted his chest. “No holes. But he’s not pleased with either of us. He’s stewin’. Think this over now, and get it firmly into your mind. You’ve told us both that your choices are your own. We’ve been around a bit longer than you, made decisions and taken actions that could be characterized as lying at opposite ends of morality’s mileposts. Jack and I know the variety of motivations that fuel those actions.”

“If you’re trying to tell me that, at the moment I bedded you aboard the Pearl, I was acting on any other motivation than bedding you -- “

“At that moment, no.” Barbossa had to laugh. “’twas a pure and simple act of lust.”

“And completely my own.” Elizabeth moved away into the deeper dark. “So what am I to get firmly in mind?”

“Relations between us since that first time have not been purely out of lust.” As Barbossa’s eyes accustomed themselves to the lack of torchlight, he perceived a subtle lightening in the blackness. Something glowed further down the passage.

“I tried to tell you that.”

“And I still think you are misguided in your evaluation of what they truly are.” Words would not refine themselves into the message he wished to convey.

“He thinks ye’r swiving him because ye’r angry at Will. It certainly makes more sense to me than any other explanation I can invent.” Jack’s voice had regained its lilting daftness. “I can only lament my poor judgment in being absent at a moment when my services might have been viewed as a more palatable alternative.”

Barbossa took a step back until he found the wall of the passage. “Eavesdropping is a grievous dangerous habit, Jack.”

“Not as dangerous as . . .”

“I said STOP!” The word blasted through the air to resound off stone in a long, rolling echo. “No more. Both of you -- give me your solemn oath that, until I release you from your word, neither of you will move against the other, or cause by neglect the other to be harmed. And both of you will quit trying to explain my own behavior to me -- as if either of you solitary, greedy, raggedy-arsed, posturing barnacles had any remarkable insight, experience or credential that might recommend the validity of such explanations to me.”

He was an old man, and probably everything else listed in her description. Barbossa sighed. “I give you my oath that Jack is safe from my hand, directly or indirectly. I will not give you any oath to reserve counsel. It would be a lie. You’re free to walk away if you don’t like what I tell you, Captain Swann.”

Elizabeth made a small sound. “I accept your word, Captain Barbossa. Jack?”

“Bugger. You laughing or crying?” Jack’s outline was visible now, standing next to Elizabeth. His head was thrown back, his arms dangled at his sides in what almost looked to be a gesture of supplication. “You have my oath, with the same reservation.”

“Your oaths are accepted. Now I’m going to look at the paintings.”

“Invisible island. Invisible paintings. What, one asks oneself, would the purpose behind said invisibility be?” Jack mused.

A good question. Cold, pulsating white-blue and white-green colors that reminded Barbossa of their icy trip to World’s End danced across his field of vision. His memory supplied the sea monsters he’d seen in torch and lantern light as the basis for the cool, dim outlines. But there seemed additional background elaborations, indications of a landscape. In addition, signs and symbols made a continuous, flowing border above the pictures.

“Not as bright as when I came through before,” Jack said. “In Singapore they’d crush fireflies and make a mixture that glowed for a while.”

“These paintings are ancient. I’ve seen small patches of rock with a kind of natural phosphorescence on the Isle de Muerta. But this was deliberately incorporated in whatever they used for paint,” Barbossa said.

“It must be activated by artificial light.” Elizabeth bumped up against him. Even as they watched the lines softened, faded.

Barbossa felt her hand brush the side of his face. For a moment he felt as ancient as the paintings. “You’ve seen what you wish? Time to collect the chest, then.”

 

Carrying the lantern to light their way, Elizabeth walked ahead on the return trip. Barbossa and Jack carried the chest between them, griping it from the bottom. Even with two of them the thing was a leaden, slimy weight.

“Fortunate I came along when I did. Doubt very much if you and the Pirate King could’ve done the job. We could always empty it out, and parcel up the contents for individual carry,” Jack said helpfully.

“No thank ye, Jack. I’ll be keepin’ it all in once place ‘til we’re back on the Pearl.” His leg hurt abominably, and pride kept him from favoring it as much as he might have.

They paused in the ampitheatre for a breath.

“Jack might have a point.” Elizabeth met his eyes, seeing him too clearly. “It would be easier going down the trail if all three of us . . .”

“No.”

It was a rough descent to the drinking pool. Barbossa and Jack both had a turn at missing their footing. Each spent a bad moment pinned against the rock with the full weight of the chest pressing into abdomen, arm and thigh before balance was recovered.

“My ribs have been staved in.” Jack let his end of the trunk down and remained hunched over.

“At least you have the use of all your fingers.” Barbossa shook out his hand. Three fingers were swollen and purple where they’d been crushed between rock and chest. He plunged his hand into the water and sighed at the instant chill.

“Let me see.”

The chill in his fingers seemed to run straight to his heart. Barbossa turned away from the pool. His eyes met Jack’s as Elizabeth inspected the raw red scratches on Sparrow’s chest.

“Not so bad. Give me your shirt.” She took the garment and laid it on the rocks next to the pool, then scooped water with her hands until the cloth was saturated. She brought him back the shirt and used a piece of sleeve to clean the scratches. “It’s not like a bit of additional blood will be noticeable when it dries. Now put it back on. You’ll be cooler.”

Barbossa turned and walked to the scenic vantage where the trail dropped steeply. The air seemed less hazy, bright with the peculiar clarity and strength that comes just before sunset. On the green expanse below, bright spots of color still danced. “Captain Swann, if I might have a word.”

“Barbossa?” she came quickly to his side.

“Tell me what you see.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “It isn’t what I see, but what I do not. The Pearl. She isn’t there.”

He’d been a fool to give her that oath. “What can you tell us about this egregious lack, Jack?”

“Don’t look at me, although if I could take a philosophical moment and point out that I’ve stood in the spot you’re in right now, bemoanin’ the theft of something most precious and dearly won . . .”

“Jack?” Elizabeth’s tone was dangerous.

“I simply do not know, oh King.” Jack stood beside them, looking at the empty horizon beyond the forest. “Although if I was to speculate, it would be along the lines of the bloody Navy, or those unhappy stout crewmen.”

“Considering the island’s preference for obscuring the view, I think we need to return to the beach with all speed and verify that the Pearl is actually gone.”

“I agree, girl. We’ll leave the trunk where it is.” Barbossa went back to the pool and took a deep drink. He couldn’t help groaning as he straightened.

“I’ll go.” Jack tucked the damp shirt back into his sash. “Old bugger like you, we’d be half the night even without the trunk.”

“You will stay with Barbossa, Jack.” Elizabeth picked up the lantern. “Of the three of us, I’ll make the best time. I can certainly run faster than both of you.”

“Can’t run faster than me,” Jack muttered. “I’ll go with her.”

“No.” When they both stared at him, Barbossa realized he’d shouted the denial. “We’ll go together, at a reasonable pace. Wouldn’t be wise to run through that forest anyway.”

Elizabeth looked into his face. “Aye, Captain Barbossa. This is your expedition.”


	6. Nest of Stars

_Standing in the field of broken stone on the verge of the forest, Barbossa felt a light, cool wind push at his back._

He turned to find the source. A change of pressure near sunset, and the island’s twin hills acted as channel for a current of air that countered the flower’s smell with the clean scent of saltwater. In fading light the highest stones at each summit sparkled and glowed with tiny shards of color so white it was hard to look directly into the brightness.

One lone scarlet butterfly glided past them and disappeared among the stones. There was no sign of the flowers.

“Eerie.” Jack accepted one of the torches and squinted at the path. “You’ll go first, then? It is your expedition, Captain Barbossa.”

“I’ll go first. Give me the other torch, Swann, and blow out that lantern. We may need what’s left of the oil later. If you see any likely wood, point it out -- but don’t touch it yourself. These torches won’t last much longer.” Orange stains and bits of withered brown material remained on the rock where Elizabeth had chopped the creepers. “Be ready with that machete.”

Eerie indeed. In contrast to their earlier walk, the plants around them were almost completely still. As plants ought to be, Barbossa thought. He kept the torch raised only slightly in front of him. Dusk crawled beneath thick greenery, stretching and deepening as they walked. It was very quiet. The flare of fire eating into pitch on the torch seemed unnaturally loud.

“Where are they?” Elizabeth whispered.

“Above.” Jack’s voice was equally quiet. “High. See the bits of color?”

Sparrow was right. Hanging motionless above them, so far up they looked like an exotic assortment of wildly colored apples, hundreds of the deadly things spread in a worrisome constellation. Barbossa kept walking. He slowed when the torchlight revealed a dark shape ahead on the path.

“Wait.”

Elizabeth stopped immediately, without question, hissing at Jack as he tried to push past her.

Barbossa bent and picked up one object, and nudged a second to the side of the path. “I think I found your hat, Jack. And some small token of the stout crewman.”

The single leather boot was ripped lengthwise.

“I am most appreciative. I love this hat.” Jack placed the hat firmly on his head. “Been through a lot together, this hat and I. We’ve both been lost and found a number of times, but we always seem to get together in the end.”

The satisfaction of running a piece of cold, sharp metal through the center of Jack Sparrow had been a brief, golden pleasure on the Isle de Muerta. Barbossa walked carefully through the darkened woods and relived the moment.

“I hear surf.” Barbossa looked over his shoulder and saw relief in Elizabeth. Jack raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Diurnal carnivorous plant life with limited self-mobility. Interesting. I suspect there are naturalist chaps who would pay well to view this island.”

“I would pay well to view it from the deck of the Pearl,” Elizabeth said tartly.

They stepped through the opening in the shrubs onto the beach. One of the Pearl’s longboats was there, wedged high and dry.

“White sand. White surf. No Black Pearl,” Jack said sadly. “M’dingy’s gone as well.”

Barbossa limped over to the longboat. He settled on the middle seat and rubbed at the muscles of his bad leg. “I could write a lexicon on the subject of curses.” And probably make a better living selling sensational pamphlets than he could pirating, Barbossa thought bitterly.

“I have every confidence in Mr. Gibbs.” Elizabeth joined him in the boat. “Do we wait on the beach?”

“No drinking water here,” Jack observed. “And the treasure is unattended. Since the flowers are tucked up in their beds, may I suggest we return and do as I advised before -- split the contents among us for easier transport.” He rummaged in the bottom of the long boat. “Water skin! We’ll bring water and treasure both back here, and wait for the inestimable Mr. Gibbs to return.”

The bay was flat, ink dark water. Silver light from a hazy, starless and moonless sky provided diffuse illumination of their surroundings. A serene, idyllic vista, lacking any sound but the monotonous, soothing crash of surf beyond the bay. The eldrich light darkened Elizabeth’s hair, and turned her skin as white as milk.

 _Lioness passant guardant, argent and sable._ Barbossa had a sudden vision of what Elizabeth’s colors would look like. How did Calypso begin her life? he wondered. Was she born or made? His claim to Elizabeth that he wasn’t a man given to fantastical notions wasn’t altogether true. The latter part of his life had been filled with the fantastical. He’d been given one last chance that few men even dreamed of getting. And in the time that remained, it now seemed he would have a rare privilege and be extraordinary witness to a legend that would live far beyond any memory of his own base and self-serving adventures. The woman that Elizabeth Swann would become.

“Captain Barbossa?”

Her voice was carefully neutral, but the days spent sailing to Singapore, observing her, appreciating both her shortcomings and excellence, had provided Barbossa with a variety of insights. Concerned for him, but careful of his pride, Barbossa thought with a combination of irritation and appreciation.

“Best go now,” Barbossa agreed reluctantly. “No rum squirelled hereabouts, Jack?”

“Alas no. I suppose if I tell you Elizabeth and I can make the trip without you, you’ll bellow again.”

“Too tired to bellow. And no.” A spasm of pain followed his first step over the edge of the boat. “I’m letting you lead this time, Jack.”

They paused by the shrubs to gather discarded pieces of branch from their morning’s clearing. Elizabeth bundled the wood together with a bit of fabric torn from her sash.

“Quite dark in there.” Jack stood at the edge of the forest. He took a step, holding the torch as high as he could. “Well then.”

Jack led the way more slowly than Barbossa anticipated. After the first few minutes, Sparrow stopped altogether. Between them, Elizabeth halted and stood, head slightly tilted, listening intently. The forest was blacker, closer, and no longer silent.

 _What made a sound like fingernails gliding across parchment?_ Barbossa wondered. Jack turned his head far enough to meet Barbossa’s eyes. He nodded, then began to walk again.

Perhaps snakes in a basket of rice was a closer description of the noise. The mental image made Barbossa grimace. “What d’you suppose is the opposite side to the coin of diurnal carnivorous flowers with limited mobility?”

“I’m sure I don’t want to know the answer to that question.” Elizabeth jumped, bringing her machete into guard position. A flurry of noise not too distant from their path ended in a thump punctuated with a sound much like air escaping a punctured bladder.

Jack began walking faster.

Sibilations and thumpings increased in frequency. From the corner of his vision, but never directly observed, pale motions came and went like distant heat lightning.

“Bugger!”

Barbossa stopped short, nearly running into Elizabeth. He held the torch away from their bodies and pressed up against her back. She, in turn, was so close to Jack’s back that her machete was nearly useless.

Jack reached around, groping. Elizabeth put her machete in his hand.

“May I just say, I’ve seen a number of disgusting and disturbing beasties, but this is possibly the most disgusting and disturbing. Y’just know it’s going to ooze horribly when I stick it.”

The thing blocking their path waved two small, flexible protrusions at them, and stared back with flat, black insect eyes.

“I’m not sure about the oozing, Jack.” Elizabeth rested her hands against Sparrow’s shoulders and peered around. “Observe the construction of its body. Those segments look like polished metal.”

The scale was horribly wrong, but the almost six-foot polished length of fringe-legged black worm coiled in the center of the trail seemed less noisome than Jack’s reaction warranted.

“Tiny mouth. Probably not interested in eating us,” Barbossa pointed out. “It’s eating the plants.”

“Why does it need all those feet?” Jack waved the machete in a shooing motion.

All the feet went into action. With a flurry that looked unpleasantly like a snake traveling on an army of eyelashes, the worm hurried for the darkness under the trees.

“Give me back my . . . “

Elizabeth’s demand was interrupted by an explosion of noise and activity. Barely three paces off the path something erupted from the ground. Mounted on a short stalk, the plant -- if it was a plant -- looked waxy-white against the dark of the forest. It was broad as a man’s back, with ragged lips along two purse-shaped sections. Caught in the grip of those lips the hapless worm whipped its body in loops and spirals of desperation.

“Jack! Elizabeth! Run!” Dim memory of stories about odd animal behavior gave Barbossa bare seconds of warning. Jack, for once, obeyed his command with alacrity. They were all in full flight when the bitter smell filled their lungs with burning pungency.

The trail ahead, Elizabeth and Jack, everything blurred as Barbossa’s eyes filled with tears. Water ran from his nose as he coughed and sneezed uncontrollably. He heard Jack curse, and squinted. The fool had stumbled over another worm, and was preparing to kick the thing.

“No!” Barbossa heard Elizabeth shout at the same moment.

“Defensive odor,” she gasped, catching at Jack’s upraised arm. “Whatever you do, don’t cut at one.”

The rest of the trail was a blur. Barbossa gagged and retched as open sky replaced forest canopy. Jack and Elizabeth were no better off. He could barely see Jack draped over a boulder, retching. Elizabeth lay curled in a ball, wiping at her eyes.

Clean air helped, but water would be better. “Get moving. We need to wash it off.”

It was a miserable hike. When they reached the drinking pool Jack plunged his hat into the pool, filled it with water and emptied the whole over his face. The third and fourth times he filled the hat, he emptied it over Elizabeth.

“This is an accursed place. I’d leave the chest without a qualm, if I could be back on the Pearl this instant.” Barbossa soaked his scarf and wiped his eyes, face and neck repeatedly. He took a long drink of cold water. The urge to retch subsided, but the weight of water in his stomach made Barbossa realize they had eaten nothing since early morning.

“We’ll sleep here?” Elizabeth’s damp shirt outlined her breasts and nipples. She pulled at it, trying to fan air between her skin and the cloth.

Jack lay on one side, cheek propped on an elbow. He watched the rise and fall of her shirt with rapt attention. It was too tempting. Barbossa kicked the elbow as he walked past. Jack tumbled over and laughed up. “One might almost think . . .”

“That it would be in your best interest to keep a still tongue in your head, Jack.” Leaning back against the rock wall, Barbossa stretched until he heard things crack and pop, then he let himself slide down into a sitting position. “When sun rises, we’ll divide up the contents of the chest and return to wait on the beach.”

Gods above and below, he never ached on sea like he did on land. The earth was a rigid, unforgiving place. He missed the Pearl. She was as much his as she was Jack’s, Barbossa told himself. He’d taken her and kept her for many years longer than Jack could claim. In truth, Barbossa thought, he would give much more than the chest to be in his cabin, stripping the wet shirt from Elizabeth, and warming her with rum and the touch of skin on skin.

“I’m amenable.” Jack tore his eyes away from Elizabeth’s nipples. “Perhaps we shouldn’t bivouac in the open, Captains.”

“I’ll not climb another step tonight.” Looking upward Barbossa could just make out the suggestion of stars, as if through a veil of netting. He slipped a knife from his vest, and tucked it under his leg, ready for quick retrieval. “I can stay awake for first watch, so you both can sleep.”

Jack snorted.

“Where is the pain worst?” Elizabeth knelt beside him. She touched his leg just above the knee with careful, probing fingers.

“It’s fine. Leave it be.” Over her bowed head, Barbossa met Jack’s eyes. “Find a likely spot and settle, the both of you.”

“I’m thinking that this is a bit exposed for safe slumber. Water nearby, who knows what many-legged crawlie might wander through lookin’ for a drink.” Jack considered the upward bound trail. He patted the filled waterskin. “I’m going up and spend the night just inside the cavern. Elizabeth -- you’re welcome to join me.”

Her chin went up, the lines of her shoulders tightened. “No thank you, Jack. I’ll remain with Captain Barbossa.”

“Your choice. Night, love.”

Silent and quick as a great cat, Jack was gone up the trail.

“You’re going to --”

“Don’t lecture me now.” Elizabeth’s hands loosened his belt. “I’m going to rub that leg. Don’t think I haven’t seen how you’re walking. Pride goeth before any number of self-induced hardships, you vile and dissolute creature.”

Her fingers were warm and careful. She kneaded the aching flesh of his calf and thigh, eliciting different pain that slowly subsided as muscle warmed and stretched under her touch. The warmth traveled through skin and muscle to awaken more aching hardness. Barbossa flexed his knee and casually draped an arm across his thigh, resting one hand between his legs.

“Father frequently had pain in his back. One of the old midwives used to bring liniment and rub his back. She showed me her technique so I might apply the liniment when she was gone.” There was quiet sadness in her reminiscence.

“You said good-bye to him. He loved you, and was very proud of you. Remember those things.”

Her fingers stopped moving. “I do. I found a measure of vengeance and acceptance. But I miss him.” Elizabeth sat back on her heels. “I see you’ve found a measure of relief from the pain.”

Barbossa looked up the trail Jack had taken. “Don’t further embarrass an old man, missy. The thing is acting like a beggar’s performing dog.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She began to laugh, a delicious sound that started with a snort of surprise and turned into an echoing noise that made him wince. “Are you implying it’s my fault your body knows it’s alive? Men.” She scooted closer and slid her fingers under his covering hand.

“I don’t have the strength,” Barbossa protested without real conviction. Her fingers closed around the irritatingly alive flesh, and he couldn’t prevent himself from moving.

“And I shall be steering this time, Captain Barbossa.”

Smug, wicked wench. Her mouth teased along his cheek before covering his lips. It was a light, almost casual kiss belied by the pressure from her fingers.

“Move a bit. I’d like you flat on your back.” Elizabeth removed her boots and breeches. She looked down at him and smiled. “Of all your postures, it is by far my favorite.”

The rock beneath his body was unyielding and far from comfortable. The sight of Elizabeth above him, clothed only in her damp shirt, made the discomfort seem irrelevant. “Ye’ll scuff your knees,” he said gruffly.

“Not much.” Elizabeth straddled him and swatted his hand away. “I’m steering. Keep those hands firmly at your side -- unless I shout an order, Captain.”

Inch by inch the heat of her body enclosed him. Barbossa watched her through half-shut eyes, wondering at the expression of utter focus and peace on her face. When she placed her hands on his chest and rocked against him, Barbossa heard himself groan.

It was like being back with the sea. He was a rock worked by the action of wind and water, Barbossa thought. Sensation narrowed to a liquid, constantly moving universe of pleasure. She seemed light as a feather as she rode him, and hot as the midday sun reflecting off the waves. Misty stars above her head pulsed with the movement of her body.

“It seems so strange,” she whispered, “to hold a piece of someone else inside me. It makes me want to pull as much of you as I can up between my legs, then just float away on the joy of it.” Elizabeth sighed as she tightened and released against his cock.

“Elizabeth.” He lifted to meet her next motion. “Can’t wait . . .”

“Then don’t.”

One last sweet, warm slide and he was gone in a rush that shook his entire body. When his eyes refocused, he realized she waited, watching him with a half-smile.

“You aren’t through, Swann.”

“No. My breasts miss your hands. If you would . . .” Elizabeth’s fingers played at the hair below his navel, then moved between her legs. “I’m nearly through.”

Her skin was silken fine under his work-roughened fingers. A brush of one calloused finger against her nipple and Elizabeth moaned, riding down on her hand and his body still lodged between her thighs.

“Like that?”

“Possibly too much. Keep doing it,” she gasped. Tight as a drawn arrow she paused, then arched her back and made a primal sound of pleasure.

Even as he was, soft and pliable inside her, the tremors that rippled through her inner walls and belly sent aftershocks of pleasure through his cock.

Barbossa dropped his hands from her breasts and let them rest on her hips. When she bent to kiss him, he helped her swing off his body. She molded up against him and lay in the crook of his arm.

“I’m hungry. We haven’t eaten all day.”

“I know of nothing edible in this place.” Barbossa stroked the curve of her hip. “At least we have water.”

“He left us alone on purpose, you know,” Elizabeth said softly against his arm.

“I do know. I confess to being surprised you mention it, however. Are we going to talk about it, then? About Will, about Jack?” Under his fingers a light shiver passed along her frame. “About everything you resolutely haven’t spoken of since you took over my cabin and bed?”

“I’d like to try.”

It was the voice of a young, bewildered girl. Something twisted deep in Barbossa’s gut, sharp and hurtful. “I will listen, for whatever good that may do,” he said carefully.

“Where should I begin? Past or present? It’s jumbled together.” Elizabeth’s fingers traced the scar over his heart. “Will has always been the biggest piece of my heart. It was like I’d been given a gift from the sea, some wonderful secret charge that was mine alone. From the first moment I spoke with him, I’ve tried to protect him. I told myself that I took the medallion to keep him safe from being accused of piracy. I made recommendations to father about his upbringing and care. As we grew I watched him from a distance. He was my secret brother, my secret friend. And as we grew the quality of the secret changed. Not only did I wish to protect him, I wished to be part of him.”

Elizabeth shivered again. Her fingers closed into a fist.

“Put your breeches on. The air is cool, and your shirt is damp.” The journey between childhood and womanhood was a mystery with awesome and terrible secrets, Barbossa thought. His body missed her warmth immediately as Elizabeth took his advice and dressed. He moved back against the rock into a sitting position, and felt every year of his own journey crouch on his shoulders and sink talons into his heart.

“When I woke up, alone, at Shipwreck Cove the morning following Will’s departure, I spent several hours trying to reconcile the pain in my heart, and the aggrieved bewilderment of my body.” She forced her way into the crook of his arm. “Did I marry Will to protect him, or because I loved him? Yes to both. By the time I realized that Will could protect himself, make his own decisions, face his own destiny -- it was too late. We were married. Will was dead. Although that seems to be somewhat of a technicality. Will had a destiny and a purpose that did not include me, except apocryphally.”

“You refer to the curse?”

“Curse?” Elizabeth pounded a hand on his chest. “Bugger that. Whatever Will’s destiny is, it is his alone. I was not consulted or instructed. The charge on the Dutchman’s captain comes from Calypso, and any arrangements concerning that charge were made between Goddess and Captain. The morning after we became man and wife in fact, Will brought me his heart in a chest for safekeeping. That is my extent of involvement in his current endeavor. He said: _Ten years is a long time, and I don’t expect the world to stop turning._ He didn’t say -- wait chaste for ten years, keeping vigil for my return, or I am damned.”

Every other word was punctuated with a thump of her fist. A particularly vicious strike accompanied the _damned._

“When I finally compose myself to face my shipmates and companions, I find they are mostly absent. And I have become _the woman who waits on the shore, wife of the Dutchman, keeper of the heart and the curse._ The story of the second Pirate King is already recorded in the archives, the Brethren are largely dispersed.”

“I believe I can understand why this would disturb you.” Barbossa took her fist in his hand. “I apologize for leaving you at the Cove. It seemed a most natural home for you.”

“The closest thing I have to a home is the Pearl.”

Barbossa was silent. “And Jack?” he asked, finally.

“Jack is the biggest mystery of all.”

In the cool night air, covered by nothing but a veil of stars, heat gathered between them. Barbossa felt some of the tenseness leave her body.

“You will have to go to Jack and force the conversation,” he said quietly against the top of her head. Barbossa took a deep breath and deliberately forced the talons about his heart to relax. “You will have to corner him and give him nowhere to hide. And I suspect you will be the one who must do the taking.”

The tenseness was back. “Barbossa. You’re telling me to --”

“Don’t make me say it again. I’d have to cut out me tongue.” He tightened his arm around her. “As long as I am Captain of the Pearl, your home is assured. Now get some sleep.”


	7. Down Crooked Lane

Pale light on his eyelids and Elizabeth’s gentle touch on his arm brought Barbossa from a shallow, uncomfortable state of half-sleep.

“I think the sun has risen.” Her face and hair were damp. Tendrils of hair escaped from her braid and curled about her temples and cheeks. She looked like a school girl who had stolen out to play in the long, wet grass of a summer’s morning. “Jack’s not back yet.”

“Argghhh.” Standing was a chore. Barbossa made it to his feet, then stepped around a boulder to take a piss. A thousand aches and pains, from heel to head, came fully awake. He took a long drink from the pool, then splashed cold water on his face and neck. For a moment the bitter odor of worm seemed stronger, then faded. He caught Elizabeth watching him and rolled his eyes.

“Yes, we both smell bad.” She laughed. “Whatever you’d give to be back on the Pearl -- I would consider giving as much to be soaking in a hot bath back on the Pearl.”

There was no way she could know that his earliest, and favorite, sexual memory contained a female and a hot bath. Barely twelve years old, up an apple tree outside the vicar’s house he had watched the vicar’s wife undress and wash. Honey gold hair, rounded hips with high breasts like two translucent-skinned pippins with tiny brown nipples. He had nearly fallen out of the tree when she began to stroke that translucent skin with soap and fingertip.

At Elizabeth’s spoken desire for a bath, it was but a small leap for his treacherous mind to supplant the vicar’s wife with a portrait so vivid it overcame his sense of place. Barbossa found himself transported to a scene of muted colors. Curls of transparent steam rose off milky water, wreathing along one upraised arm that held a dripping cloth above Elizabeth’s upturned face. He could smell roses and night-blooming jasmine, a mix of scents from childhood and far later, part of a young man’s memory. Water beads clung to that slender arm, and fell in crystal drops from spirals of hair wetly splayed across her breasts like seaweed on a beach, breasts with centers like the hearts of wild roses. Crystal drops trembled on each small pink nipple. Her pose was art without artifice. Under his tongue, the drops on her nipples would be more inebriating than rum.

“There are no hot baths on the Pearl.” He knew the words sounded hostile as soon they left his mouth.

“I am daily reminded of that. It was just a notion, a dream,” she frowned. “How long did I sail by your side and not remark on the challenge that shipboard life presents to personal cleanliness?”

Barbossa bit his lip and winced.

“Are you snapping at me because your leg is bad this morning?”

“No,” he snapped. “Just need to walk a bit.”

Barbossa took a double handful of water and splashed his face again. He was more than half-hard, and found himself unaccountably resentful to be in that condition. There had been many women over the years. Except for one or two in his youth, Barbossa had come to find that once he bedded a wench the spice of anticipation and mystery largely lost its savor. Faces and names blurred together. One wench’s breasts, one wench’s thighs -- he could recall extraordinary bits and pieces, but there was no totality of remembrance or longing.

Cursed again, and this time true death may be the only cure, Barbossa thought with grudging acknowledgment.

His newest curse stood and regarded him, hands on hips.

How could a slight woman in dirty boy’s clothing, scratched and smudged and far from clean, manage to look so formidable? Elizabeth’s expression clearly told Barbossa she would be bleating at him if he didn’t forestall her.

“I see what you mean about the sun. It’s light enough, but hard to pinpoint the exact time in this place. Would you like to see the contents of the trunk?” Barbossa fingered the charm that hung below his collarbone. “If anything will bring Jack back, it would be the smell of treasure hanging in the air.”

“I would. Your necklace is the key?”

Forestalled smartly. Barbossa removed the chain from around his neck. “It is. I only used it the once. Let’s see if the lock still operates.”

Elizabeth squatted beside him and watched with fascination as he matched the charm up with the horizontal slot on the chest’s lid.

“Sun dried it out fairly well.” The wood was still tacky, but no longer slimy. There was a faint sound of grit against metal as Barbossa inserted the charm into the right-hand edge of the slot. A careful push to the left, a small snick of sound, then slight additional pressure and a decided series of clicks told him the lock was undamaged.

Barbossa tried to lift the lid. “It was difficult last time as well. There’s nothing to get purchase on. I need a file, or bit of metal to pry with.”

“The machete blade?”

“Too broad. And my knives may be too slender.” Barbossa patted down a bandolier and found a short, thick blade. “Nearly forgot about this.”

It was like trying to extricate a horse from quicksand. He gained a small opening. Putting every ounce of strength he had into it, the lid emitted a sucking noise and parted.

“Good seal.” The waxed cloth bags that lay on top felt slick, but not wet.

“Neat for pirate treasure,” Elizabeth said. “I expected a jumble like your horde on Isle de Muerte.”

“It’s just as I acquired it. Five bags, one metal box.” Barbossa lifted out the bags and set them aside. The box beneath appeared untouched by the sea. “Here. You’ll like these.”

Elizabeth took the box between her hands, eyes wide.

“Just press the latch.”

“Pearls,” she whispered. “So many pearls.”

They ran through her fingers like a harvest of mixed foxgrapes, smoky black, ivory and delicate yellowish-gold. “A nice assortment. Take the ones you fancy.”

Elizabeth closed the lid. “It’s your treasure, or it’s the treasure of every man on the Pearl. After that decision is made, I wouldn’t turn down a gift from you.”

“Don’t know if that makes her less, or more, a pirate.” Jack sauntered down the path. “Miss me, love?”

“I wasn’t aware I’d thrown anything at you,” Elizabeth muttered. She set the box next to the bags.

“I trust you spent a pleasant night, without anything disgusting crawlin’ into your bed.” Jack’s eyes darted between Elizabeth and the sacks. There was a nervous energy that hadn’t been apparent the day before. He paced around to take a look down over the forest, then returned to the pool for a drink. “No Pearl.”

“No.” Barbossa replaced the knife in his bandolier and watched Jack very carefully. Something off, something different had superceded Jack’s dismay at Elizabeth’s behavior. “Don’t you want to look at the goods, Jack?”

“Well, yes. Of course.” Sparrow sat down beside Elizabeth and grabbed the nearest sack, upending it onto the ground. “Gold things. Very nice.”

There were six chains in total, each made of links as thick as a man’s smallest finger, with a joined length that reached from wrist to elbow twice over. Three golden cuffs set with a myriad of colored gems, some kind of heathen neck ornament arranged in scallops of gold, and a double handful of assorted, uncut gems completed the contents of the bags.

“Half the gold alone will keep the Pearl provisioned for a year or more, and give the men something to throw away on small pleasures.” Jack rattled a handful of gems in his closed hand. “Now that they can enjoy small pleasures.”

“What’s on your mind, Jack?”

Elizabeth looked at Barbossa’s face closely, reading his tone of voice. She turned her attention to Jack. “What have you been up to?”

“Been trying to reconcile m’self to the fact that, as much as I wish to deny it, he’s apparently a better thief than I am. Kept me awake for quite a while. What sleep I took was of poor quality, due to the inhospitable stoniness of the landscape.”

“I’ve always been a better thief than you, Jack. You lack concentration to be anything greater than a pickpocket, a scavenger.” Barbossa saw the first flare of honest fury in Sparrow’s face. The emotion was immediately masked by a turn of the head and a flip of Jack’s expressive fingers.

“You might be right, mate. I do admit to never having stolen anything near as precious as what you’ve taken,” Jack said, inspecting his rings.

“You can’t steal something freely given.” Elizabeth’s words were soft, but hard as Damascus steel.

“As you say. Hungry?” Jack produced a tattered packet from somewhere between shirt and breeches. He unrolled several coarse, reddish objects that looked much like bark. He offered a piece to Elizabeth. “Chew it well, and drink as much water as you can.”

“What is it?” Elizabeth turned her piece around suspiciously. She put one end gingerly in her mouth.

“Cured meat, and I doubt you want to know what kind.” Barbossa extended his hand. “Share, Jack.”

Sparrow gave him a piece of the meat, along with a look of direct dislike. “Went for a walk early this morning,” he said, chewing. “Up near the other peak.”

“With what purpose?” Casual exercise was not one of Sparrow’s pursuits. Nosepokery and curiosity, however, were. “What did ye see?”

Jack fondled the gold chains. “While trying to settle my mind for sleep last night, I had another look at the paintings. One part of the glowy bits struck me as particularly interesting.” He waved his hands in Elizabeth’s general direction, a generous curving gesture. “Landscape like a pair of bosoms . . . or like those two hills behind us . . . lined with decorations. And the decorations seem to match up with the passage I’m standin’ in, so perhaps, says I, there is another passage on the hill across the way.” Sparrow cocked his head and slipped one cuff on his wrist. “Also another cave. Care to take a look? A morning’s walk while we wait for the Pearl.”

Elizabeth made a small sign of assent in Barbossa’ direction. “I would rather walk than wait without purpose. He talks too much if he isn’t about something purposeful. And even then . . .”

Jack clasped his hand over his heart and rolled his eyes. “Cut to the quick, Mrs. Turner.”

Elizabeth touched her machete. “We’ll see if that’s possible.”

“Captain Swann. It is his nature to be an irritant. You’ve forbidden me to kill him, so set the example.” Barbossa rubbed his hand over his eyes wearily. He picked up one of the cuffs, hefted it for weight, then clasped it about his wrist. Heavy, but it would nicely block the cut of a sword, Barbossa thought. “Very well, Jack. A morning’s walk, then back again. We don’t want to be far afield when the Pearl returns.”

“Taken in the light of recent permutations, it’s difficult for me to believe you’re growing more cautious in your advancing years.” Sparrow looked up from contemplation of the pile of treasure. “Best remember, mate -- worry killed the cat.”

“Rum and stroking brought it back,” Elizabeth chanted. She draped two of the gold chains around her neck, and clasped the last cuff on her wrist.

Jack twisted his mustaches and leered broadly. “I may yet grow to appreciate your knack of reasoning, darling.”

Draped with gold chains around his neck, and a gold cuff on his wrist, Barbossa felt overly-ornamented. Sparrow and Elizabeth at least had long sleeves to lessen the impact of the gaudy things. After consideration he removed the cuff and placed it in one of the bags, along with the chains and gems. “If I need to stick something, I don’t wish to be slow about it,” he explained in answer to Elizabeth’s questioning look. “I’ll put this bag and the pearls in yon clump of sawgrass. As a precaution. The trunk’s too difficult to hide.”

Elizabeth considered, then removed her chains and cuff. “Put these with them. The gold is rather heavy. Jack?”

“I’ll keep mine, love. There be pirates hereabouts.”

 

Walking, even walking over stone and rock, did seem to loosen and relieve the worst of his stiffness. It also kept Elizabeth and Jack occupied, and quiet. Wind swept around them, keeping the temperature comfortable and the odors of the surrounding forests faint, often undetectable. Barbossa’s eardrums twitched, and Jack nodded at the same instant.

“Blowing up for a storm. We’ll get rain soon.” Jack followed his nose around in a semicircle, sniffing. “Lots of rain.”

There may have been a trail up the second hill. At times Barbossa thought he could see a pattern weave itself between the rocks. Jack led the way, inspecting every boulder they passed. When they were nearly at the summit, on the side opposite the place the first cavern had been found, Jack stopped altogether. There was nothing more than a roomy ledge, and the shear upward thrust of rock that ended in the hill’s bare summit.

Jack stood and surveyed the island below. “Trees go all the way ‘round,” he pointed out. “Only one safe spot to bring a ship near, that bay.” His arm swept in a circular motion. “Shallows and bars everywhere else.”

“It’s so white,” Elizabeth said. “The same kind of sand continues out to the sandbars.”

“It appears so,” Barbossa agreed. The haze that surrounded the island had darkened over the water until it was nearly a solid curtain. “Well we can’t go up much further, Jack. If there’s a cavern here, I don’t see it.”

“Didn’t see the other one, either.” Jack held his hand on the rock face and paced back and forth.

Elizabeth joined the search, concentrating on the lower regions of the rock. “Barbossa. Come here.” She wedged herself behind a tumble of rock and bent nearly double. “There’s something carved into the stone.”

“Move your arse.” Jack tried to push in beside her.

“Move your own.” Elizabeth gave Sparrow a look that would cause any rational man to give her a wide berth. Sparrow merely ignored her and continued to push until she stepped out of the way.

Flirting like children, Barbossa thought. They’ll poke at each other until . . . he sighed, surprised to realize how resigned he was to the undoubted outcome of the poking. Not only resigned, but beginning to wish the inevitable would occur with a bit more dispatch.

“Both of you, step back. We’ll shift the rock.”

It didn’t take long. The deeply incised markings appeared to be nearly identical to the symbols that decorated the interment gallery in the other peak. Jack knelt next to the carving and studied it raptly. “Interesting. It’s not just a carving, it’s joined in pieces, like a puzzle. And the purpose of a puzzle --”

Jack placed one hand on each side of the central decoration and pushed.

A very small sound, the rattle of rock on rock from somewhere nearby was the only reaction.

“Moved a bit.” Jack’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Give me a hand, mate. Push on that bit while I push here.”

Barbossa went onto one knee and examined the carving. He placed his hand on the right half of the decoration.

“Now.”

They pushed together. Barbossa could feel a resistance, and slight movement under his fingers. There was another rattle of rock, and a whisper that brought to mind the sound the treasure chest had made when its seal was disturbed.

“Again.”

Next to him Jack grunted. Barbossa pushed on the rock until he could hear the blood pounding in his ears. A small, shrill scrape of sound, a tremble under his fingers, then the portion of rock he pushed against moved smoothly away from his hand, inward.

With a rumble that seemed to come from the roots of the earth, a portion of the wall they faced disappeared into a channel that opened at the base, where ledge met rock face.

“Bugger,” Jack said faintly. “You could drive a team of horses through that.”

Barbossa stood between Elizabeth and Jack, and stared at the gaping hole. This was no small passage. “Light the lantern, Jack.” He stepped onto the threshold and whistled into the blackness. The sound was swallowed by the immensity of the gulf that opened before them. He felt Elizabeth’s hand close around his forearm.

“Is it possible,” she asked, “that the interior of the entire peak is hollow?”

Barbossa heard flint strike, then smelled smoke and flame.

Jack stepped beside them, holding the lantern. “Thieves and explorers all -- let’s take a look, shall we?”


	8. Another Land

Starkly geometric carvings began just inside the cavern’s mouth, interspersed with rows of stylized animal creatures.

Barbossa stayed close to Elizabeth and let Jack lead with the lantern. “Keep watchful, Jack. Places like this were seldom left unguarded.”

“Places like this?” Elizabeth’s attention was wholly on the carvings.

“Consider what we know about this island. It’s obscured and hidden in a way I cannot explain. These hills are guarded by forests full of dangers that exist in no other part of the world I’m familiar with, or have heard any speak of.” Barbossa gestured at the rock stairs. “I’ve been in my fair share of heathen temples throughout the world. I've walked inside a secret city carved from stone in the depths of the desert. But I’ve never seen the art that could hollow out a piece of earth this large, and with such elaborations.”

“Perhaps it’s a natural cavern adapted to this purpose,” Elizabeth said.

“Perhaps. But every detail I can see looks to be the result of man’s working, not nature’s.” Barbossa scuffed his boot against the ornate, rolling curl on the edge of a step. “This is more than utility, it’s artistry.”

“Who do you think they were?” Elizabeth’s fingers traced the grooved stone.

“Some ancient, vanished people.”

There was a scale and grandeur about the mammoth stairway that teased at Barbossa’s mind, and left him puzzled and strangely unsettled. He had seen many native artifacts taken by the Spanish, embellished pottery from the African continent, ancient tapestries in eastern bazaars, centuries-old Asian shields and breastplates. Whatever people had wrought the building and decoration in the twin hills came from no artistic tradition he could recognize.

The stairs were a masterwork of building. Carved into a channel of rock against the shell of the hill, with a protective guard as high as Elizabeth’s waist between steps and abyss, the same arrangement was repeated in a slow, downward spiral: twelve broad steps ended in a wide landing. Each landing was level and smooth, with a series of notched grooves carved into the guard.

“Jack. Swing the lantern up for me.” Barbossa examined the wall behind the notched guard section of the second landing. Just within fingertips' reach, a series of protruding stones that seemed to be part of the overall decoration took on new meaning. “They used ropes to raise and lower things. That’s what the grooves are for. Rope guides.”

Jack stood on tiptoe and just barely grazed the stone with his fingers. “Tall buggers.” He went to join Elizabeth near the guard wall, holding the lantern over the edge. In the insignificant light of the single flame, it was possible to imagine that only air occupied the interior of the peak. Darkness dropped off the edge of the stairs and the landings, into space that seemed to stretch forever.

“Air’s fresh enough, but the smell is off.” Jack frowned. “Can’t feel the storm anymore. You?”

“No.” And that was disturbing. The familiar sensation against his ears and skin that heralded the approach of weather change had disappeared as they walked the first set of stairs. “Keep an eye on the lantern. If the air becomes bad, that should tell us.”

Jack nodded and continued down the stairs. Barbossa saw Elizabeth shiver. She moved closer to his side.

“It’s so still. When our feet scuff against the rock, it’s almost as if the sound is lessened, muffled.” Elizabeth’s voice, although a mere whisper, carried clearly enough.

On the fifth landing the carvings ended, to be replaced by richly colored mosaics that stretched from floor to a height several inches above Barbossa’s head.

“Enamel, shell, beaten gold, polished stone,” Elizabeth tested the surface of the tiles with a tap of her fingernails. “More odd animals, birds without feathers, lizards as big as houses . . . could the scale possibly be accurate?”

“Exaggeration. Probably.” Jack tried to pry a bit of gold out of the mosaic.

The scale was disturbing on many levels. Barbossa watched the mosaic unfold as they passed across four more landings. The vast bright landscape must have taken lifetimes to complete. Details were tiny, precisely set bits of color. Animals, plants, rows of squat buildings, tall spire-topped, windowless buildings, fields, jungles, mountains . . . man-like figures working, building, riding the huge birds and lizards . . . if you didn’t look too closely at the representations it was possible to assign an identity to things. It was possible to ignore the sense of wrongness that came when isolating any single portion of the images.

“Why d’ya suppose this one has three eyes?”

“Leave it alone, Jack.” There was some repetition in the mosaic, Barbossa realized, squinting in the dim light. A frieze ran along the top edge. “That pattern along the top. What do you see?”

Jack held up the lantern. “Sort of like the design on a Grecian urn, except it looks a trifle squidy.”

“Are those arms and legs -- and heads?” Elizabeth took a step forward. “Definitely tentacles, but much shorter than a squid, or kraken’s tentacles. Perhaps it is some variety of sea plant.”

“Which is depicted between dismembered people. Don’t think it’s a sea plant, Swann.” The greater question of why a race of ancients would find this particular pattern appropriate to an artistic endeavor of the scope before them left Barbossa unsettled and queasy. “This exploration seems less and less like a good idea.”

“Gold in the walls, mate. Bound to be something of value at the bottom.” Jack stopped abruptly.

A shiver passed beneath his boots. Barbossa immediately knew why Jack was waiting. He had felt the movement of the earth a score of times in his life, at varying degrees of strength.

“What is it?” Elizabeth grabbed his arm to steady herself. A rumble from the depths grew to a dull roar. Stone groaned and buckled as the entire hill danced around them.

“Earth tremor!” Jack ran down the final steps to the next landing. “Backs to the wall.”

A crash from above, and stone fell around them like hail. Barbossa heard his own teeth chatter together from the violent shaking. With a dreadful rending screech, half of the landing they stood on broke away and fell into the abyss. His first instinct was to retreat up the stairway. A cascade of loose stone directed from above changed his mind.

“Down another flight, Jack.” He saw Sparrow jerk his head in assent, then inch his way along the wall to the next set of steps. Elizabeth followed.

Every moment Barbossa expected the tremor to subside in strength. Instead it seemed to reach a level and hold, shaking the world like a cat shakes a mouse until all life is extinguished. Directly behind Elizabeth he stepped off the landing and placed his foot down onto the next stair.

For a moment Barbossa thought he was inside his own dream. The mercifully brief sensation of falling ended, unlike the dream, with a shower of sparks and encompassing pain.

 

“His breathing has steadied, his heart has steadied. There’s nothing more to be done but wait.”

Jack Sparrow’s voice, distant, across a midnight sea.

“Why doesn’t he wake up? Apart from the scrape on his head, his body seems sound.” Elizabeth. Frantic.

 _I’m fine. Just resting for a moment._

“Blow to the head. Problematical kind of injury. I won’t lie to you. ‘s not good that he won’t wake up. But I’ve seen men with more damage recover.”

Something wet on his cheek.

“You’re crying. Why are you crying? ‘Lizabeth, I shot him and he recovered. This is nothing.” Jack. Irritated, perhaps a touch -- distraught? _Why?_

More wetness. A brush across his mouth.

“I will not lose him, too. I refuse.”

 _Stubborn miss,_ Barbossa thought with appreciation, drifting. _I’m not dying, just need to sleep a bit._

“He made a sound!” Her breath on his lips. “Barbossa. Open your eyes.”

“Give him some space. Hard for any man to breathe when you’re draped over his chest, as I’m sure you’ve had ample opportunity to observe.”

Her mouth was gone. A pity.

“I’m really curious, Jack, as to how, and when, you acquired sufficient character and moral direction to disapprove of my life choices.”

“Victim.” Jack, protesting far too much. “Intimately acquainted with what happens when you make choices. Scars to show for your choices.”

“And yet here you stand. Scars healed, whole of body, and largely sound of mind. What is it about my choices that bothers you most?”

 _Don’t argue with her, Jack._ Barbossa tried to make his mouth form the words. _She’ll chew you up, spit you out, and scatter the bits to the fish._

“Let me enumerate, love. I save your life. You consign me to a hideous death. I forego immortality and make it possible for your sweet William to tarry in this vale of tears, thus giving you a chance at a wedding night -- also saving your life for a second time, I might note. You repay my magnanimosity by bedding the vile old lecher who stole my ship and crew, not once but twice.”

“Oh, I’ve bedded him more than twice.”

 _Abandon hope._ Barbossa wanted to laugh aloud. _Hornet’s nest. Maelstrom._ He let himself go where the darkness took him. Voices rose and fell like surf, sound without meaning.

“. . . about your choices.” Elizabeth’s voice. Sharp. Focused. “He had the Pearl for ten years before you tried to retake her. What were you doing all that time? Traipsing over half the world? How many ports did you visit while Barbossa’s Pearl made a dark name for herself? You had the compass -- where did it lead you?”

 _Wondered that meself. Certainly the months during which we spent the gold, before the curse became clear and plain, the Pearl was an easy ship to track. No word of Sparrow then. Thought the prancy bugger’s bones remained on that island, until odd stories began to turn up in the ports._

“Perhaps it was not a direct course. I took the long way ‘round, but found her at journey’s end. And had her taken from me directly.”

“At which time you -- what? Went after her? Or prepared to take the long way once again? I won’t even mention your bid to become Captain of the Dutchman. Where was the Pearl in your consideration then? Was it because you knew she was in competent hands, well-cared for? Is that what really keeps you from trying harder to take her, and hold her?”

“Sank her twice.” Jack, no pretense, no daft evasion. “No one else’s responsibility, really. I love the Pearl.”

“And that meant you had to let her go? Am I something else you’ve tried to let go?”

Bits of memory. Tia Dalma’s voice. When had he heard the words? _Jack Sparrow does not know what he wants? Or do know, but are loathe to claim it . . ._

“Bugger. Obvious to me what was going on, even if you are too green to savvy how men and women are with each other. Young healthy woman, you ‘n Will sniffing ‘round each other without ever . . . Some heat between us, you have this romantical obsession with pirates, ‘Lizabeth. Couldn’t really take it personally. Even less so now.”

“Since this is a conversation I will never have with you again, Jack, please listen thoughtfully. My heart and my mind are the compass I will follow. I love Will. I will love him until I die. Will knows how I feel. Yet now that he is a supernatural creature, and I am a purely mundane woman, our relationship cannot be the traditional thing it might have been.”

“And I’ve seen the evidence of that.” Jack. Still spiteful. Jealous.

“Accept it and move on. I am no longer the governor’s daughter, or a lady. There’s a death sentence on my head. Even though the Company is in disarray and does not hunt pirates, I have little doubt others will step into their boots. I am branded as surely as are you. I acknowledge that Barbossa is not a man I would ever have known so well in that more traditional life.”

“Could be wrong about that. Hector always liked the young ones, and I don’t believe he was much concerned with their willingness . . .”

 _Slander. Never raped a woman. May have bribed a few, but what man hasn’t? Losing the argument, Jack. Best shut it now._

“Captain Barbossa is hard, competent, cruel, and more fair than you may wish to admit. I sailed to Singapore and over the edge of the world with him, and made it back again. I told him I loved him, and he didn’t believe me, either.”

“You never!” A scuff against rock. “Will’s concern, not mine. I can’t . . .”

“Coward! Come back here!” Elizabeth, past the point of good judgment and reason. “You will face me, Jack Sparrow, and plainly say, for once, what is in that black heart.”

“Getting out of the locker, that was me at the end, not him. He took m’ship!” Jack’s voice was louder now. “He took . . .”

“Me?” Elizabeth. The rise and fall of surf against land. “He took nothing. We share. And I am richer, happier, and more of a woman for that sharing.”

“And what of Will, who you say you love? What of your husband?”

“How many husbands have you cuckolded without a second thought? Don’t hide behind feigned concern for Will’s honor. Will forfeited that title when he died, but neglected to completely quit the world of the living. I belong to no one but myself. I will live, and love, as I feel so moved.”

A sound in her voice he recognized. Even barely conscious it sent a rush of anticipation through his blood.

“The last time I tried to kiss you, you refused. I’m going to kiss you now, and if your mouth can still manage evasions afterwards, I’ll not press you further.”

“Elizabeth. Not a good idea --”

Scuffing. Silence. Every ounce of willpower he could muster went to command his eyelids to open. Bloody hells, it hurt. One blink and a fuzzy, unfocused vision confirmed the scene his imagination had already painted. Jack, backed against rock by Elizabeth’s body. Sparrow kissed her, eyes closed, one hand at the nape of her neck, the other pushing against the small of her back. The scene faded as his own eyes closed involuntarily. _Does my face look that way when I kiss her?_ Barbossa wondered. _Like a drowning man starved for air, who could only find that air in her mouth, her lungs, her body?_

“You were right about the heat.” Elizabeth. Breathless. “I remember standing next to you on the dock, both of us wet to the skin, with a chain about my neck. You made me fasten your belt. You bumped against my hand and smirked. I didn’t understand then what your body, and my body, said to each other. I do now.”

“Most men find themselves pressed up against a young lass in a wet shift, nipples all a-perk, going to get stiffish, love. Nothing personal.” Jack. Dissembling. Shaken.

“So right now, this moment, _this_ is nothing personal?”

 _Who pulled the monkey’s tail? And how did his pet come to be in this place?_ As much as he wanted to know the answer to these questions, and eavesdrop on the outcome of Elizabeth’s attempt at seduction, the quiet dark rose to softly float him away. Elizabeth’s voice followed him into the dark.

“I want you, Jack Sparrow. This is not the time and place, but when Barbossa is safe and well, I will have you. Where can you run? I’ve been to the ends of the world to find you already. Youth’s a stuff will not endure, Jack. I won’t wait ten years for any man.”

If Sparrow had any reply, it was lost in the soft dark.


	9. Heart of the Tower

“Open your eyes. Barbossa, open your eyes.”

A trickle of water dribbled from his lips to chin. Barbossa swallowed and tried to wipe wetness from his beard. Nothing happened.

“He’s awake!”

“Told you. Give him another drink.”

Barbossa forced his eyes open and groaned. “Stop tryin’ to drown me.”

Elizabeth and Jack were fuzzy presences floating above him. It took Barbossa a moment to realize Sparrow supported his shoulders to prevent just the thing of which he’d accused them.

“Let him back gently.”

As his vision cleared, Barbossa could see Elizabeth’s dust-smudged face drawn tight with worry. Jack’s face was unworried, but serious for Jack. Hair powdered white with dust, glittering here and there with shards of mosaic tile, Sparrow looked like he was costumed for some strange masquerade.

“You slipped and fell, and were hit by several rocks, mate. How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by several rocks. Even m’eyelids hurt.” Barbossa made the effort and managed to heave himself into a sitting position. Back, leg, ribs, chest, especially his head, all felt like a mob of angry soldiers wearing hobnail boots had enjoyed sport at his expense. “How long was I out?"

“Hours. I couldn’t wake you.” Elizabeth curled against him and lay her head on his shoulder. “You are not to die in this place, Captain Barbossa. I forbid it.”

“Shouting orders again?” Barbossa took her hand and carried it to his lips. “I’ll lose every bit of respect Sparrow has for me,” he said against her fingers.

Jack snorted. “You cannot imagine how right and wrong you are.”

Elizabeth stiffened and took a deep, involuntary breath. Barbossa looked down at her head on his chest, then up to meet Sparrow’s eyes. “I have a more than adequate imagination, Jack. What’s our situation? You are both unhurt?”

Sparrow’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “The Pirate King and I have a few bruises, nothing more. But the ledge which was above us is now somewhere below us. There’s a substantial gap in our path back to the surface.”

“Nothing for it then, but to continue going downward. Light one of the torch stubs, and save what’s left of the oil.” The thought of finding himself stranded in the bowels of the earth without light was unappealing. “Detach yourself, and give me a hand up, Captain Swann.”

Jack added his hand to hers. “Ye’r as wobbly as a landlubber on rough seas. Sure you don’t want to sit a bit longer?”

“Time is not with us. I judge we need to keep moving before we run out of light and water.” Barbossa tried to take a step forward, and felt his leg begin to falter.

“Jack, on his other side.” Elizabeth wedged her shoulder under one arm and grabbed hold of his belt.

“As you command, oh King.”

An ignominious position, but between the two of them Barbossa found he could manage the steps.

“How many landings have we passed?” Elizabeth asked.

“We were on the eighth when the tremor struck,” Jack said promptly. “Just left the ninth.”

“Think you the number’s important?” Barbossa felt her hand desert his belt and slide under his vest onto bare skin. “The builders of this place do seem obsessed with repetition.”

“Twelve sets of stairs, then?” Jack nodded. “Let us hope this is the arrangement.”

 _She needs to touch me, skin to skin, for reassurance._ Barbossa felt the heat of her hand on the muscle of his back, the way her fingers curled into his flesh. How had they come so quickly to this place, like old lovers who needed only the sound of the other’s voice, the perfume peculiar to the other’s skin, to experience that immediate jolt of recognition, belonging, and desire.

He had the advantage over Jack, Barbossa admitted with sudden self-knowledge, and not a little satisfaction. Whether she loved him as she claimed, or he'd merely been part of the voyage to discovering Elizabeth Swann, there was a strong bond between them. She wanted and needed family almost as much as she needed a lover. Whatever borrowed time was left to him, Barbossa decided in that instant, there were worse fates than being consort to a Pirate King.

Wedged between Sparrow and Elizabeth, dull pain accompanying every step he took, Barbossa laughed aloud.

“Barbossa?”

“Just glad to still be alive, Swann. Death does change one’s outlook on life, pain, and the necessity of using such piss-poor crutches.”

“Happy to be out from under y’r armpit. Just say the word,” Jack grumbled.

They rested for a few minutes on the tenth landing, then helped him down the next set of stairs to the eleventh landing.

“Let me be now.” Barbossa’s head felt as heavy as a cannon ball, and occasionally a stab of pain ricocheted behind his eyes and blurred his vision. The rest of his body seemed to function more predictably, although his bad leg hurt like the blazes. “One more set of stairs, then we shall see.”

Jack moved to the fore. Elizabeth still stayed close to his side. Moving with some care, Barbossa was able to walk down the remaining stairs without leaning against Elizabeth, or the wall.

“Looks like the King guessed correctly.” The pale, flickering light of the remaining few inches of torch revealed a huge, open expanse of rock floor. “No more stairs.”

A pile of rubble to the left marked the final resting spot of the eighth ledge. “We could start at this point, and work our way around.”

“We could.” Jack took a few steps further into the blackness. “Here’s something. Two of something. More statuary?”

“Positioned to line up with the terminus of the stairway,” Elizabeth said. “Not statuary I think, the surface is covered with the same style letters that were inscribed along the border of the first passage.” She trailed her fingertips over the fluid arabesques. The top of the truncated pillar was level with her collarbone. “More beautiful inlay on top, all gems.” She smoothed the surface of a ruby-colored stone as large as a hen’s egg. “Oh. It moved. It’s loose.”

“Let me.” Jack reached around her toward the stone.

“Leave it be! Both of you, quit touching things.” An oppressive sense of wrongness amplified the pounding in Barbossa’s head. “I’m in no condition to monitor your obsession with slipping small objects into your pockets, Jack.”

“That’s interesting.” Jack pulled his hand back. A barely audible hum, like the sound of a beehive across a field on a summer’s afternoon, filled the space around them.

“What did you do now?” When he died again, Barbossa had no doubt it would be due to the machinations of one or both of his present companions.

“Wasn’t loose, exactly. Wiggled it and felt it lock into place.” Jack looked as guilty as he sounded.

When the sound died away, the light appeared.

During the event Barbossa could only watch in suspended amazement. Later his mind would supply the idea that they stood at the bottom of a vast, funnel-shaped, luminescing cobweb. Tracers of green-white light appeared around the circumference of the floor, then crawled up the walls, and along the top of the frieze pattern along the stairway. Viewed from below, the spiral course of the stairs and landings was easy to mark.

Bugger indeed. The green light filled and illuminated the cavern with a strange clarity. Every flat space the eye could see above floor level was covered with brilliant mosaic work. Beyond the pillars the cavern floor changed to tiles of slate, each as large as the foundation of a small cottage. Scattered mosaic chips were spread across the tiles as though flung by a careless hand.

The tremor, Barbossa thought, looking upward. There were gaps in the web of light, too. Raw scars from the movement of the earth had gashed more than their ledge.

Actual size of the cavern’s interior was difficult to judge, due to the light’s odd quality, and the bizarre nature of objects grouped on the cavern floor. Before the tremor they must have been arranged with the neatness of a military parade, and still retained much of that feeling in spite of minor disarray. As intensity of the light web increased, an arrangement of plain, hexagonally shaped spaces located high up the wall opposite the terminus pillars became visible. Set in three rows of four hexagons, the plain rock structures in a sea of colored decoration seemed somehow ominous.

“Rock honeycomb for bees the size of whales,” Jack muttered. “Cracks through a couple of them. Hope no whale-sized bees crawl out.”

“They do look uncomfortably like the interment section of the first passage,” Elizabeth said in a subdued voice. “Are we going to take a closer look?”

“Beneath the honeycomb, what do you see?” Barbossa took the torch from Jack’s limp hand and extinguished it on the ground.

“Arches. One on each side. Caverns beyond this?”

“We’ll take a look. Quick and careful. And neither of you touch anything! Especially you, Jack.” Barbossa stood for a moment and listened. The hum that preceded the light had died to the smallest, barely discernible sound.

Chances of finding anything resembling treasure seemed to diminish as they made their way across the cavern floor.

The hill’s interior was more oblate than circular, with a wide empty aisle that ran from the location of the terminus markers to the honeycomb wall between the low arches. They walked the central aisle without stopping to explore the objects grouped on either side. Barbossa knew before they were a third of the way to the arches that he was in no condition to be exploring. His head spun when he moved it too quickly, and his bad leg threatened to buckle unless he walked very carefully. If they had to run for it, he would be a handicap, or worse.

“Jack.” Elizabeth placed her hand on Barbossa’s arm to stop him. Sparrow had gradually lengthened the space between them, even though he paused frequently to pick up shiny bits of mosaic.

“Yes?” Jack waited, tucking another bit into his sash.

“In spite of having a mountain dropped on his head, Captain Barbossa is going to walk until he falls. Then we shall either have to camp right here -- which I am loath to do -- or carry him back to the stairs.”

“Not so keen on that either, are you? Nor am I.” Jack examined him with a squint. “Does look a bit wobbly, now that you point it out.”

“Sit down.” Elizabeth pointed at the ground. “To accomplish as much as we can, as quickly as we can, Jack and I will first inspect the structures to our right. We will not leave your sight.”

“Go.” He could not argue with her. Barbossa sat on the slate, mentally cursing himself for a feeble old man. For once Sparrow made no comment, merely following Elizabeth away from the central aisle.

First viewed near the terminus pillars, the round stone objects occupying the right-hand portion of the cavern had looked much smaller. Arranged in four rows, each row containing three evenly spaced round projections, the sight reminded Barbossa of a giant version of a child’s peg board game. As Elizabeth approached the closest projection, the notion of a farmer’s storage tower replaced the game image. Scale became obvious when she stood at the base. The towers were almost twice as tall as Jack or Elizabeth, and so wide round that the two could not clasp hands around the circumference.

After inspecting three of the towers, Elizabeth motioned to Jack and they walked back quickly.

“Plain stone, not even much decoration,” Jack said. “Odd band around the upper rim, looks like melted metal.”

“A seal.” Elizabeth shook her head. “I think they’re for storage.”

“And, not really interested in trying to see what this lot might have stored under a seal like that,” Jack muttered. He was restless and twitchy, constantly swivelling his head to scan their surroundings. “Other side now, oh King?”

“Yes.”

They went quickly, side by side. So much alike in height, and build -- discounting the obvious gender differences, Barbossa thought. In another life, or world, they could have been brother and sister, so similar were some of their character traits. The notion made him smile. He made a mental note to mention the idea to Jack.

If the stone towers looked like a peg game, the objects to the left reminded Barbossa of a field of slightly distorted Chinese fighter kites. Again the scale became apparent with Elizabeth standing next to a disturbingly skeletal outline beneath a vaguely bat-winged canopy.

Barbossa tried to get to his feet. Whatever they were inspecting was far more intricate and interesting than the towers. Jack circled Elizabeth and the canopies, touching and poking at things. “Quit touching, Jack,” Barbossa muttered. He managed to stand and take a score of steps off the aisle before they saw him, had a hurried conversation, and returned to meet him.

“You’ll want to look at those later,” Jack said. “Later being the time when you ain’t doin’ an imitation of the walking dead. I’m going to nip along and take a looksee through the arches. Elizabeth, stay with the old lecher.”

“No,” Elizabeth protested automatically.

“He’s been in worse places.” Barbossa had reservations of his own. Jack met his eyes and shrugged. “Let him go. Like a rabbit, Jack. Look and leave, or you know she’ll be in after you.”

“Aye.”

They watched him walk briskly toward the left arch.

“I don’t like this place.”

“Nor do I.” The light, the smell, the spaces, the sense of antique and alien existence all crawled over his skin leaving discomfort and irritation. Elizabeth saw him grimace and moved into his arms. Barbossa folded her against him. “Ye’ll have Jack all confused, Swann.”

“Jack couldn’t be more confused than he is,” she said sharply, looking up into his eyes. “You heard us talking.”

“Some. You aren’t a situation he’s dealt with before. I understand much of what he’s feeling.” Barbossa wiped a smudge from her cheek. “Are you well?”

Elizabeth buried her face on his chest. When she looked up, her eyes were shiny and suspiciously wide. “I should be asking you that question. Are we well?”

“Aye.” Barbossa let her go. “Jack’s coming back.”

Elizabeth wiped at her face.

“Quiet out here?” Jack looked between them. “It’s another cave, largish, nothing laying about, no decorations of any kind. Surface is polished smooth like oiled slag glass, and drops into a kind of sinkhole in the middle. There’s water seeping from above the hole. Steaming water, smells a bit sulfurous.”

“Natural hot spring.” Barbossa raised his eyebrows. “But not collecting?”

“Not anymore. Maybe once. Tricklin’ down the sink hole now.” Jack shuddered. “It feels worse in there than out here. Can’t explain.”

“I feel it, too.” Elizabeth rubbed her arms. “We need to settle somewhere and let Barbossa rest. Then we need to form a plan.”

 

They chose to climb the final set of stairs and settle on the first landing above the terminus. Unspoken, but clearly in consensus, was a need to keep as much space as possible between them and the cavern floor. Barbossa briefly considered climbing to the second landing, but his legs took exception to the thought.

“Got any of that meat left, Jack?” He let himself down, gingerly, to sit with his back against the mosaic.

“This is the last.” Jack gave them each a piece of dry, red stuff.

Barbossa chewed slowly. He’d been hungry before, and could bear an empty stomach. He doubted that Elizabeth had any notion of the sufferings that came from lack of water and food.

“One swallow of water each, then we get what sleep we can.”

“I’ll keep first watch,” Jack said.

Elizabeth settled next to Barbossa with a sigh. “I am unutterably weary, but cannot stop wondering about the things we have seen.”

“Just think what a fine tale it will make to add to Mr. Gibbs’ collection,” Barbossa said. He let his cheek rest against her hair.

“Yes. It will. I miss Mr. Gibbs. And the Pearl. I miss bathing, and eating, and I really miss rum.”

“Why am I always advisin’ odd folk on the definition of treasure?” Jack offered her the waterskin.

Elizabeth swallowed once and passed it on. Barbossa took a scant swallow of tepid water and sloshed the remainder to get a feel for how much was left.

“About half full,” Jack said. “Maybe three days if we’re careful.”

 _Before it gets bad._ Personal experience finished the thought. “If necessary, we might be able to collect some of the mineral water.”

“You’re both very good at surviving,” Elizabeth said. “I have faith in Jack’s imagination, and Barbossa’s practical skills. Now, tell me a bed time tale, to divert me from the weirdness. One of Mr. Gibbs’ stories.”

“Well, there was the time I . . . “ Jack began.

“Have you ever pondered the depth of animosity between Captain Jack Sparrow and Lord Cutler Beckett?” Barbossa asked, replacing the stopper to the waterskin.

“Lies. Calumny. Revolting fabrication,” Jack protested. “Which story did you hear?”

“Mr. Gibbs told me that the Black Pearl started her life as the Wicked Wench,” Elizabeth said. “The Wench was sunk by Beckett, and Jack branded a pirate, when Jack freed a large number of black slaves instead of transporting them to sale.”

“God’struth there. The rest of this story I heard in a Nassau tavern, from one of Beckett’s men -- who shortly afterward quitted this life due to loss of blood from a severed tongue.”

“Best piece of work we ever did, Hector. Blowing the shite out of that dandified bit of meanness,” Jack said. “Wonderful story. Rest easy now. I’ll wake you when . . .”

“Nicely attempted, Jack. But I feel I owe you something for imparting incomplete information to her concerning my personal habits.”

“Barbossa? How incomplete?” Elizabeth turned her head so she could look at his face, half a smile on her mouth.

“You heard -- where’d you that notion?” Jack asked. From his expression, he was quickly reviewing everything that had been said over Barbossa’s supine body.

“Must have been a dream.” Barbossa winked at Elizabeth, and saw the color bloom in her pale cheeks. “Beckett forced Jack to stand on deck, in chains, and watch the Wench disappear into the sea. As far as Jack knew, every man of his crew was dead, or in chains. Beckett took him back to Nassau, pressed brand to his arm, and put him behind bars to wait for hanging.”

“I wish Beckett was alive so I could kill him again.” Elizabeth sounded sleepy, but very convicted. “And it wouldn’t be so quick a death.”

“Yes, Swann. I believe you.” Barbossa let his head fall back. He closed his eyes and continued. “Cutler Beckett was a man with good connections, but no friends. Wealth and power were his gods. I’ve heard he was a small man, yet somewhat vain about his person.”

“Small? You mean --?”

Jack held up his thumb and finger, perhaps two inches apart and laughed. “Smallish. Unimpeachable source.”

“That source being the woman who tended him as a babe? Let me tell the story, Jack.” Barbossa tried to move his hips into a comfortable position. Elizabeth squirmed, then resumed her imitation of a limpet. “Cutler Beckett was not married. His mother was a pious woman who kept his household in order, and often visited the gaol to read scriptures to the condemned. Now, the man who told me this tale was not a first-hand viewer of the event, but said common speculation was that Beckett’s mother, in the course of ministering to the spiritual needs of a doomed pirate, fell prey to some unexplainable madness and degradation.”

“She had her own key to the cells, and a tiny pistol in her garter no bigger ‘n the palm of your hand. Make what you will of that,” Jack said gloomily. “Degradation eminently explainable.”

Barbossa laughed. “Ye’ve the devil’s own luck with lasses, Jack.”

“Neither lass, nor lady, alas. I wrestled the key from her roving hand, ‘Lizabeth, left her locked in the cell, and made good my escape.”

Barbossa opened one eye. There was an almost pleading quality to Jack’s hurried explanation. “That jibes with the overall information I was given.”

“What did he leave out?”

“The part where Cutler Beckett arrives for a spot of pirate-taunting, and finds his mother on her hands and knees in a filthy cell, skirts bunched around her waist, beggin’ to be slapped harder. Jack has one hand between her legs, and the other on a thin, leather-bound collection of sermons which he is applying to the lady’s arse with much energy and resounding force.”

“Thank you so much. I’ll never get to sleep now.” Elizabeth’s voice was suspiciously unsteady. “I’m surprised he didn’t shoot you at once, Jack.”

“His mother was dead in the way.” Jack shrugged. “Nearly didn’t stop him.”

“D’ye want to tell the rest of it? No? Beckett and two of his men rushed into the cell to rescue the lady, who was most unhappy with the interruption. Takin’ advantage of the confusion, a tactic at which Captain Jack Sparrow has no peer, Beckett, Beckett’s mother, and two cringing soldiers are left locked in the cell. Jack and the thin volume of sermons are headed for open seas.”

“If you think that’s a good tale, ‘Lizabeth, I can’t wait to tell you about the establishment in which I found one Hector Barbossa, and the position I found him in on the day I interviewed him for the position of first mate.”

“I’ll tell her m’self. Better yet, I’ll show her how you found me.” Barbossa felt Elizabeth’s body shaking. “You’ve a strange sense of what’s amusing, Swann. Get some sleep.”

Stiff and sore, back and behind against cold rock, Barbossa nevertheless felt lassitude creep over his battered body. Elizabeth was warm at his side. He wished for a fleeting moment that he could turn and take her into his arms.

“It’s still on the Pearl,” she said through an enormous yawn. “The collection of sermons. Under your bunk. I’ll show you when we get back.”

“Bloody hell.” Jack sounded thoroughly revolted. “Thought I’d tossed the thing overboard.”

“You might spend your watch contemplating how well that habit of packrattery has served you over the years, Jack.” There were other things stuffed under that bunk that Barbossa had never inspected too closely.

“I’ve plenty else to contemplate without adding that to the mix.” Jack lay in front of them, full length on his stomach and stared out over the cavern. “Now, next person who speaks gets to stand first watch instead of me.”


	10. Giants Sleep

_Moss-green fragrance, thick as the syrup of composted pansies, awakened a terrible, disoriented hunger._

Workers milled around him, nearly naked men and women, all bald, with saffron skin and blackened, slanted eyes. There was much to do, so much to do. It was time to enter the waters and . . .

 _And what?_ Barbossa’s mind whirled. The cavern was full of radiant, constant motion. Surely those towers could not be the ones they had found. They were too short, too small -- although the workers used ladders to relay bundles up and over, so he must be viewing them from somewhere above.

But there was no sense of perspective, or position.

Barbossa tried to swivel his head, and a twisting movement of sorts resulted. Other things cluttered the cavern floor. Multi-legged worms, guided by men with broomlike tools rushed along the teeming central aisle to vanish under an archway. With a shock, Barbossa realized the honeycomb spaces between the arches gaped empty, unfinished. Somewhere a part of him knew the intended use of those spaces. Another part of him shied away, refused the knowledge.

 _Dream. It’s a dream of one past that might have been._

More visual information pushed into his bewildered mind. The mosaic work in bright, raw hues, colors that pulsed and stabbed and refused to be named -- and yet, he almost could. Words of description hovered just beyond mind’s grasp.

Nets of rope stretched from each landing on the stairway to the cavern floor, as the bald people worked to lower containers of every shape and size. Several of the bat-winged canopies reached the floor as he watched. Men untied the things, then carried them to the formation in which Barbossa had first seen them.

Without volition, perspective changed and he was traveling, or perhaps floating, above the aisle. Men looked up at him, then averted their gaze and stepped away.

 _Small, so small and insignificant, yet they serve their purpose._

Motion caught the attention of one of his eyes. A canopy hovered without touching the ground, tethered in place -- but trying to soar like a bird. Like a kite.

 _Worth a closer look._

His body would not obey his intent. Streamers of viscous color summoned him, crawling over the lip of the arch, colors that were not colors at all, but visible, audible odors knelling a deep, unholy vibration of recognition.

 _Feed. Breed._

He passed beneath the archway, and glimpsed great shapes swimming in a dense soup of steam and color. Liquid waited, so sweet and welcome on his bare feet.

Except what Barbossa glimpsed through vaporous, oily swirls of air were not feet, but an extremity for which he had no explanation or name. Clusters, globules of material floated on the liquid around him. Something bumped against him, and more globules clumped together. A sensation of immediate, extreme arousal left him gasping and floundering, bewildered by the impression that his feet and head -- instead of his cock -- were erect and hard. Another of the massive shapes touched him, and part of Barbossa’s mind bellowed an order to quit the pool immediately. Another part of his mind rolled in ecstasy as he was pressed between two conical-shaped, tentacle-crowned monstrosities.

 _Feed. Breed. Feed. Breed._

The imperative thrummed through every portion of his awareness like a sounding heartbeat. If Barbossa had possessed a proper mouth, he would have shouted his rejection of the imperative. But he could only watch, helplessly, as tentacles with cat-irised eyes, and puckered, fringed mouths reached to touch and suck and eat and feed . . .

 

“NO!” Barbossa woke to find his mouth full of ear. He was at the center of a tangle of arms, legs and hair. Someone’s hand was in his breeches, and the heel of Elizabeth’s boot was under his chin.

There was a flurry of disengagement. Barbossa wiped his hand over his mouth and spat.

“By all the gods, above and below. I had a terrible --”

“Dream,” Elizabeth said. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, nipples distinctly visible through her partially askew shirt.

“Horrible!” Jack held one hand before his face, fingers cupped. The other hand scrubbed vigorously against the side of his leg. “What in all the circles of hell was that? And why is my ear wet?”

“You fell asleep on watch, Jack?” With a list of so many wrongs to address, Barbossa fastened on the most familiar. “Give me the water.” He took a quick drink, rinsed his mouth and swallowed. The smell from his dream lingered, seeming to coat his tongue with unpleasantness.

“I was interfered with, bewitched,” Jack protested, pushing the heel of his hand across the ear in question. “One minute I’m counting bits of golden tile, the next minute I’m rolling in a vat of vegetable stew with great nasty things what don’t know if they’re carrots or squid or humping frogs.”

“You dreamed that, too?” Elizabeth’s eyes were huge. “And the bald people . . .”

“And the flying kites?” Jack shook his head. “Know what they’re for now, don’t we.”

“What happened to us? How could we all see those things?”

Barbossa heard the combination of intrigue and unease in her question. He looked out over the cavern floor, empty of life, bathed in cold green light. The honeycombs had been filled eons ago, and sealed. Three of the seals were cracked now, two broken nearly in half. “Memory,” he whispered. “Memory of something older ‘n time. We do need to get out of here.”

 

Jack climbed the stairs to inspect the ruined landing. When he returned he was focused and grim. “I think I can make it across the wall to where the stairs resume. I may be able to string the rope for a guide.” He shook his head. “Don’t think you or ‘Lizabeth can make the climb without some aid.”

“I'll trust your assessment, Jack. Give it a try.”

Jack removed his boots and tied one end of the rope around his waist. Barbossa tied the other end around a piece of fallen stone, and held the coils loosely in his hand so he could play out the slack as Jack climbed.

Eyeing the mosaic covered stone, Barbossa knew it was doubtful he could have managed such a climb even in his youth. Sparrow slipped several times as he tried to find invisible footholds on the smooth surface. Places where the rock had been torn by the tremor offered the only sure holds. The first few feet had suffered the most damage, and Jack progressed surely. When he reached the unscarred portion of the wall, Jack slowed, stopped, and studied the mosaic. Clinging like a barnacle, he moved another scant inch, lost his hold and slid downward several feet.

“Jack!” Elizabeth added her hands to the rope.

“Can’t do it,” Sparrow said briefly. Tiles crumbled and fell as his fingers and toes searched for a hold. Another slip downward.

“Elizabeth. Move away.” Barbossa braced his feet and looped the rope over his elbow at the same instant Jack’s precarious grip failed. He took Jack’s weight on his arm, and slid nearly to the brink of the precipice. The solid thud of Jack’s body swinging back to the rock under the damaged ledge was followed by a string of profanity Barbossa barely understood. “If ye can scream like a woman, I have to b’lieve you’re all right, Jack. You can lend a hand now, Swann.”

Working together they hauled Sparrow back onto the stairs.

“Sorry.” Jack dusted himself off and untied the rope from his waist. “Time to get creative, Captains.”

“You mean the kites.” Barbossa looped the rope back into a neat coil.

“We’ll have to go back down there,” Elizabeth said. She looked between them. “Then let us go quickly. I do not wish to sleep again in this place.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

Side by side they walked down the stairs, past the terminus pillars. Barbossa tried to ignore an unpleasant feeling of dual memory as they crossed the center aisle and walked to the rows of canopies. Amidst the odors of dust and minerals, ghosts of other disturbing odors lingered.

“Here we are, then.” Jack walked around the first canopy they reached. “Thoughts?”

“It is a device built to float, or fly.” Elizabeth frowned. “The skeleton under the canopy is like a cage that supports the wings, and provides two flat bars fore and stern that may provide a place for passengers.”

Barbossa reluctantly touched the stuff of the canopy. The surface was slick, unfamiliar under his fingertips. “Double-layer,” he said slowly, walking to the rear of the device. The canopy appeared to be shrouded to two squat barrels. Hoses led from the center of each barrel and were affixed to each wing of the canopy. As he bent to inspect the joining of hose to canopy, the wings twitched above him.

“Beshrew! Jack!” He knew immediately who was responsible for the movement.

Jack peered back at him, and waved at the supports near the front bar. “Like a ship’s wheel. In a limited, upside-down way. Think of the canopy as a combination of rudder and sail.”

“So if we can get it aloft, it’s possible to steer the thing into the side of the mountain?” Barbossa rolled his eyes. “What d’ye think of this arrangement in the rear?”

Jack inspected the barrel and hose system thoroughly, clever fingers poking and prodding. Elizabeth followed every move and expression. Barbossa bit his tongue and squelched a natural urge to comment.

“Twisty locking rings here, and here.” Jack pointed at each end of the hoses where they fed into the barrels. “Barrels were filled with something that needed to be released into the canopy, then contained after release. Tops of these barrels are cracked around the hose seals.” He rotated the ring on one barrel, then pulled the hose completely free. “Let’s try another canopy.”

The second and third canopy’s barrels also showed the effects of time. But the fourth appeared intact. Jack tried to twist a ring on one of the barrels, without results. “Won’t budge.”

With misgiving, Barbossa exerted his strength on the matching barrel’s lock. He felt resistance, then the ring rotated smoothly. The hose hissed and jumped.

“Bloody hell.” Elizabeth covered her mouth and laughed somewhat hysterically. “You should see your face, Barbossa.”

Barbossa discovered he had moved backward several feet without conscious volition. “Just bein’ careful.”

They watched in fascination as half of the canopy plumped and rose, forcing the other side to dip toward the floor. When the process seemed complete, the canopy stood fully on its side.

“Easy as you please.” Jack walked briskly around the kite. “Shrouds keep it from flyin’ away. Rear lines need to be locked and sealed,” he reached down and fiddled with something next to the working hose, then stepped back. The hose came away from the barrel to dangle from the canopy.

The back of the kite rose higher into the air as it strained against the still attached faulty hose and front tethers.

“The front lines are anchored in the rock.” Jack pulled his knife and swiped the blade across one of the front tethers. The action resulted in a shrill twang, as if the knife had struck metal. With a second cut the line parted, and the canopy rose higher.

“Only a few questions remainin’,” Barbossa said gloomily. “Is there a kite left with two good barrels? How much weight can it bear? Can we steer it?”

“As to steering, I can give it my best try, mate.”

A rattle and fall of rock against rock shocked them into silence. Heart racing, barely breathing, Barbossa scanned the area, paying particular attention to the honeycombs and archways. When quiet continued, his heart gradually slowed.

“Just a bit of debris shifting, naturally?” Elizabeth murmured.

“Perhaps.”

Jack shook his head, eyes narrowed. “Nothing natural about this place. I might be able to answer one of y’r questions. Let’s see if this’un will lift me. Hang on to the shrouds, doubt if I could steer it this way.” He wrapped a leg over the under-skeleton and clamped his hands over another support. “Cut ‘em.”

Barbossa motioned to Elizabeth. “You’ve got a knife? Cut the hose.” He took his sharpest knife from his bandolier, got a grip on the line, then took a strong cut at the wirelike material. His first cut met with the same result Jack had experienced. With the hose in the back free, the kite turned its wedge-shaped nose toward the cavern floor and jerked against the shroud in his hand.

Jack went from vertical to horizontal.

“Quit mucking about!” Jack complained.

“I couldn’t hold it.” Elizabeth came to stand next to Barbossa.

Barbossa took another cut at the line. “Grab the front line that’s already free,” he said, as the second cut did its job.

Jack shouted something that sounded like a complaint. The kite quickly rose, nose down, as far as it could with the two of them holding the front lines. Jack scrambled around until he was once again sitting on a piece of undercarriage. Even bearing Jack’s weight, Barbossa could feel a resistance to his hold that told him the device would continue rising if he released the line.

Jack floated several feet above their heads, flapping one arm like a mad bird. “Let me go. I’ll jump afore it gets too high.”

Elizabeth met Barbossa’s eyes, and shrugged. They let go of the tethers at the same moment. The kite began to rise at an alarming rate.

“Jack! Be careful!”

Sparrow released his hold on the cage, and slid down to dangle like a raggedy kite-tail. Catching some air current, the kite began a slow spinning motion.

“Too high, Jack.” Barbossa didn’t care if Sparrow broke his neck, but taking their general fortune into account, he’d probably only break a leg and incapacitate himself.

“No worries. Coming down now.”

But Jack didn’t let go. The kite began a lazy, circular descent. The wing lost its plumpness, sucking flat as it came down. Jack landed easy and stepped away from the kite, which wavered for a moment, then fell over.

“Leak in the canopy, or the seal wasn’t tight,” Jack said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m of the opinion that a fully inflated kite can carry all three of us, at least high enough to regain the stairs above the damage, perhaps even back to the entrance.”

“Then let’s find one that --”

Rock rattled and crashed, nothing subtle this time, but a hail of rubble explosively expelled from one of the cracked honeycombs.

Alien memory tried to fill in the name of the things that had been sealed in the honeycomb, and failed. Barbossa shuddered. Unnameable, unholy, and obscenely unattractive, a tar-black, pustule-covered mound oozed stiffly from the newly created hole and dropped to the cavern floor with the hollow squelching sound of a long-dead carcass.

Elizabeth made a small noise, and stepped close to his right-hand side. Jack was suddenly close, on his left.

“About that other kite, mate,” Jack whispered.

Barbossa held up his hand, a silent signal to hold. They watched, almost without breathing, as the mound wobbled, heaved, then sluggishly humped itself through the archway and left their sight.

“Water. It’s going to the water,” Elizabeth said softly.

“Not much in there. Might be a while.” Jack was off, running.

Kites five and six had time-damaged barrels, but number seven appeared intact. Barbossa met Jack’s eyes. “Might only have one chance at this, Jack.”

“If both wings fill, you ‘n ‘Lizabeth, take the back bar. I’ll lock the seals and release the hoses from the barrels, then take the wheel, so to speak. I can cut the tethers with me knife. Is it a plan?”

“The nose will drop.” Elizabeth answered. “As soon as you release the hoses. Better you sit in the front, with your knife ready, and Barbossa seated in the back. Weight will be more equal then. You can cut the tethers at the same time I detach the hoses.”

“Too risky,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You might --”

“She’s right.” Barbossa nodded. “Captain Swann will get aboard in time.”

They looked at each other, then in unison back at the archway. Barbossa went to one barrel, Jack the other. The seal was stiff under his fingers, but under careful, steady force gave way to rotate smoothly.

“They’re both filling.” Jack watched for a second, then pulled his knife and went to the front bar.

Barbossa followed, putting his full weight on the back bar. The kite was coming off the ground much faster than the canopy with only a single inflated wing. Even with their combined weights, Barbossa felt his feet leave the ground.

“She’s not going to be able to reach us.” Jack tried to swivel for a good look behind him. The kite bounced slightly, but kept rising until it reached the end of the hoses and tethers.

Elizabeth looked up at them, then bent to put her ear near the hose seals. “I can still hear a small sound. I don’t think the barrels have emptied yet.”

“It will have to be enough. You need to be up here.” The canopy made small, upward jerking motions. “As soon as you cut those, she’s going up, Jack.” Barbossa made a quick decision. “If Elizabeth can’t get on, I’m going to drop off. Ride the thing out, if you can.”

Jack nodded at him, a grim expression in his eyes. He leaned over as far as he could and spoke directly to Elizabeth. “Do not count on me to return to your rescue, ‘Lizabeth. Be a good wench, and get yer arse up here.”

“Close the seals, Elizabeth.”

“Right first. Jack, cut the tether on your left . . . now!” Elizabeth stepped back, and the hose dangled free.

The kite lurched, but Jack had parted the tether with the first cut of his blade. “I’m going to cut the remainin’ line before you close the seal. Be ready. The nose will rise and the back will be lowest. Detach the hose, grab the back bar.”

She nodded, fingers poised next to the locking ring.

Barbossa met Jack’s eyes and gave a brief nod. “One way or another, she’ll be safe.”

Jack cut the tether.

It was a frozen, unending moment. Barbossa had once described her, in his own thoughts, as mongoose-quick. In a single fluid movement, quicker than any snake strike, Elizabeth released the hose and dove for the carriage next to him. Barbossa’s hand closed over her arm, and the cavern floor fell away.

Holding tight to the carriage, Barbossa pulled on her arm. “Swing y’r leg over the bar.”

The kite jerked, swerved, and began to turn about in ever-rising, lazy circles.

“Stoppit! Get stationary!” Jack shouted. “Can’t maneuver with all that wiggling goin’ on.”

He pulled harder. Elizabeth had her other hand on the bar, and was trying to raise her chest level with the bar.

“Drop my arm. I have to do it myself.”

Barbossa let his grip relax, and guided her fingers to the bar. “I trust you will not die on me, Captain Swann.”

“Not planning to. Let go.”

Barbossa let go.

“Barbossa! Great steaming mound o’shite has returned.” Jack pointed back toward the archways.

As they still circled, higher and higher, it took Barbossa a moment to get a clear field of vision. The mound was no longer black, but a lighter grey-green color that looked possibly less attractive against the creamy, pus-like protrusions. Even from a distance, it seemed more fluid, perhaps larger. And it was sucking its way up the sheer stone face of the cavern above the archways.

“Cavern mouth is up there!” Jack yelled. “But I can’t promise where we’re going to head if you don’t get her settled.”

“If you’ve an obscenity that covers this situation, please share, Jack.” Barbossa locked his knees, gripped the bar tightly with one hand, and let himself fall backwards into space. His bad leg immediately supplied the obscenities for which he was searching.

“C’mere.” Hanging upside down, he offered Elizabeth his free arm. “I’d give much to issue this order under more favorable circumstances . . . but, climb me, Captain Swann. Keep the boots out of m’face.”

She made quick, relatively light work of it. As she struggled to get her leg over the bar, Barbossa had an unimpeded view of the mound climbing the wall. He had the unsettling impression that the thing had heard, or perhaps scented them.

A current of wind brushed his face, and the kite soared, then dropped again.

“If you’re not upright, can’t promise not to brain you on the way out,” Jack shouted. “We’re going up and out, and we’re going now!”


	11. Away Brown Boys Would Run

The threshold of the cave and the crown of Barbossa’s head nearly occupied the same space at the same time. As it was, he felt his hair brush over stone as the kite made a swift exit into the grey light of a new day.

Changing hands on the bar, Barbossa gripped the vertical support next to him, and pulled himself into a sitting position. The pain in his leg eased considerably when he saw Elizabeth safe beside him.

They glided past the ledge outside the cave’s entrance. Barbossa opened his mouth to shout instruction to Jack, to try and bring them down on the first flat surface he could find. The words were blown back into his throat.

Barbossa cursed himself for a fool. He was a sailing man. He knew the ways wind moved. One wingspan past the door of the cavern air pushed up over the land below, caught the canopy, and carried them on an ever-ascending path.

“Amazing!” Loose hair from Elizabeth’s braid whipped and twined around her laughing face. “Sailing the air is amazing!”

“The Pearl!” Jack shouted back over his shoulder. “It’s the Pearl”

 

The island lay below them like a beautifully detailed and colored map: twin peaks surrounded by verdant forest . . . the horseshoe-shaped bay where the Pearl sat, an ebony trinket for a goddess’ bracelet . . . white, curving lines where sea churned over sandbars ... all softened and slightly distorted by the island’s haze.

Barbossa saw Jack cast an canny eye downward, and move his body between the forward carriage. Sparrow’s shoulders and arms strained as he tried to exert his will against the kite’s controls.

“No help for it. We’re going out to sea!”

At the mercy of the wind there was no way to tell where would they come down, Barbossa thought bleakly. He doubted the Pearl had seen them. They would sail right through the ring of haze, out over open sea, and crash somewhere far from land or aid.

The kite wavered, then began a slow, curving descent.

“Dead air.” Elizabeth waved a hand in front of her. The push of the wind died to a gentle touch.

She was right. Dead air occurred as they floated above the outer ring of sandbanks around the island. Barbossa felt a faint pressure on his skin along with the cessation of wind. Some unnatural agency maintained the presence of the haze, he felt sure.

Without the wind’s lift, the buoyancy of the kite decreased. “To our advantage,” Jack said. His efforts at steering resulted in a slow circle that took them along the interior border of the haze, back toward the bay and the Pearl.

As they dropped lower, Barbossa could smell rain in the air. There was new litter on the beach, and around the rocky edges of the forest. A storm had come and gone while they slept in the cavern’s belly.

The Pearl had only been gone two nights, but it felt like half a lifetime. Watching the island pass beneath his feet, Barbossa thought of his bags filled with gold and gems, and a box of pearls sitting in a clump of grass on the first hill. He thought about the Black Pearl, and remembered Tia Dalma’s mouth moving on his body as he surfaced from a deep, dark place where nothing mattered, or changed. He remembered Elizabeth Swann’s mouth moving against his, the first time he kissed her.

“Into the sea, if y’have to,” he roared at Jack. “But get us down.”

They circled the island twice, ever lower as Jack learned the interaction between wind and the haze boundary. On the last and final circle they passed over the very top of the forest. Bright blossoms peered up at them and snapped at their passing feet. Butterflies crashed into the kite and wheeled away, helpless and damaged. The water around the Pearl was smoky grey, and calm. When the kite finally dipped, dove and crashed, Barbossa welcomed the clean, salt water over his head.

He surfaced next to Elizabeth. Jack followed, grinning like he'd just spotted something good to slip into his pockets.

“Interesting kind of sailing,” Jack said. “Enjoyed that.” He kicked his feet and was gone with the grace of a sea otter, toward the Pearl.

Barbossa followed, Elizabeth close at his side. When they reached the Pearl, and he saw Jack halfway up the anchor rope, he floated, one hand on the rope. Elizabeth’s hand reached to join his.

“The Pearl. Home,” she said. Her face was luminous with relief.

Barbossa pressed her tight against the side of the Pearl. In the cool water their clothes clung together. They might as well have been fully naked, a condition not unremarked by Barbossa’s hands and lips. He kissed her fully and at some length.

He saw Gibbs’ face, briefly, above. Elizabeth’s breeches sagged with the weight of the water, and slid easily around her hips. “Need t’be in you,” he said, roughly. “Hang on to my belt. I’d just as soon not have to dive after my breeches.”

Elizabeth held the back of his belt, and wrapped one arm around his neck. Her laughter turned to a moan as his cock slid between her legs. “Home,” she breathed, as she sank down onto him. “Bring me home.”

Her wet breasts were hard and buoyant against his chest, nipples like firm, red currants beneath the soaked muslin. Elizabeth let her weight sink on him, then rise and fall as her hand pushed against his shoulder.

“Gibbs ... is not ... definitely not .. watching us?”

“Not at the moment. And a good thing -- this ain’t as easy as I imagined it would be,” Barbossa managed to say. He had one hand on the anchor rope, one hand cupping a buttock -- and at the same time trying to keep her breeches from dropping away. Elizabeth laughed at him and squirmed on his cock, which responded in a way that told him the awkwardness would be over in a very short time.

He clenched his hand around the rope, thrusting into her harder than he could ever remember pushing into a woman. Her head snapped back, and she made a noise in her throat like a wordless song. Buoyed by the sea, soaked to the skin inside her heat, Barbossa felt himself tighten and release as Elizabeth arched back against the Pearl’s dark shoulder.

“Bar-bos-sa!”

He took a jutting, muslin-covered nipple between his teeth. “I’m here.” He felt her flex and spasm around his body, then eased out of her. “Y'can let go of my breeches now.”

Elizabeth quickly grabbed her own and tried to arrange herself. “Have I mentioned how much I appreciate the cleverness of your beautiful mouth, Captain Barbossa.” She put a hand under his chin and brushed wet strands of beard and mustache into place, then raised his head to meet her kiss.

“I apologize for the brevity of the welcome home,” Barbossa said against her lips.

“You can apologize at length later, when Mr. Gibbs is out of sight and hearing. The ladder’s coming down.”

Jack had already given orders when they flopped over the railing onto the deck.

“Anchor coming up, Captain?” Mr. Gibbs looked between the three of them.

“Aye.” Barbossa collapsed against the railing. “Get us away from this place.”

Elizabeth pulled the belt tight on her drooping breeches, twisted the water from her hair, and stalked after Jack with a purposeful light in her eyes.

“Right away, Cap’n!’ Gibbs looked back toward the island. “The longboat?”

“Leave it. We’ll get another.”

Jack the monkey scampered across the deck and jumped to his shoulder. The creature scolded at length, patting Barbossa’s head. “Yes, lad. We’ll go below and get the hat in a bit.”

Haze closed around the island, and the bay disappeared. Soon not even the smell remained on the wind. Barbossa leaned against the rail and welcomed the feel of open sea. When he took inventory, the aches and pains that afflicted him from shin to chin were numerous, but not unusually severe. His stomach felt tight and empty. The entire adventure had been brutally fruitless. His treasure still sat high on a hill, surrounded by danger and death, and as far as he was concerned it could remain there until the end of time.

“There’s a meal of sorts in your cabin.” Elizabeth handed him two cups, one of water, one of rum. “Mr. Gibbs is impatient to relate his own story, and hear ours.”

“And Jack?” Barbossa gulped the water, then took a large swallow of the rum. It burned as it went down, and settled like coals in his empty belly.

“Asleep -- or perhaps catatonic -- on the bunk.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Raggetti has the wheel. You need to eat.”

“Don’t need nursin’, Captain Swann.” It was good to have the deck of a ship, and the roll of the sea back under his feet. It made him feel irascible, comfortable.

Elizabeth’s eyes laughed at him. She followed him to the cabin with what Barbossa knew was deceptive meekness.

“Captain! Captain!” Mr. Gibbs stood as they entered, holding a mug in one hand, a piece of biscuit in the other. “We took a small excursion.”

“The Africans?” He sat stiffly, choosing a chair so he could keep an eye on Jack, who was indeed apparently sound asleep on his bunk. Sparrow had also helped himself to Elizabeth’s favorite nightshirt.

“Aye. Stinking Island spooked them bad enough, but when Captain Sparrow and their companion did not return, they went crazy. Knocked me on the head and dumped me in the brig with Pintel and Ragetti. Figured we were the three most likely to give them a problem.” Gibbs raised his mug to the monkey. “Small Jack took the key and let us out.”

“And where be the Africans now?” Barbossa filled his own mug with rum.

“I didn’t kill them outright,” Gibbs apologized. “We dropped ‘em in the sea off a bit of island.”

“Should’ve killed ‘em.” Jack sat up, yawned, and swung his feet of the edge of the bunk. “Once a pattern of mutinous behavior has been established, you can bet good coin that said behavior will occur again.”

“But you made y’r way back, without difficulty?” Barbossa met and held Jack’s eyes as he asked the question.

“What I remembered of the course, and Mr. Raggetti’s nose, made that possible.” Gibbs cleared his throat uneasily. “And the treasure you went to recover?”

“Sadly lost.”

“Too bad. We’ve another leak below. The Pearl needs repairs, Captain.”

“And we need supplies.” Barbossa let his eyes travel to Elizabeth’s face. “We’ll make another plan, Mr. Gibbs. Now, go take the wheel from Ragetti. I’ll be up in a bit and tell you a tale like no other ye’ve ever heard.”

Gibbs downed the remainder of his rum. “Our course?”

“Back to Tortuga.”

“Bye the bye, we came across Captain Sparrow’s dinghy. It was sinking, but Pintel hooked out a familiar chart before it went. He kept hold of it for you.”

No one spoke for a moment. “Thank you, Mr. Gibbs,” Elizabeth said, finally.

Jack the monkey jumped from Barbossa’s shoulder and landed on Gibbs just before he shut the door behind him.

“He doesn’t like me much,” Jack said lazily. “The monkey, that is.”

“Perhaps you’ve shot him too often.” Elizabeth buried her face in a mug, then took a piece of biscuit and began to eat. “You still have your gold chains, Jack. And the cuff on your wrist. So not all the treasure was lost.”

“Only what you abandoned, ‘Lizabeth.” Jack stood and pulled the chains over his head. He dropped them on the table, along with the cuff. “At least, most of what you abandoned.” He reached between his shirt and his vest, and pulled out one of the chest’s bags. A hail of mixed pearls and gems bounced onto the table. “Should be enough to get m’ship repaired.”

“My ship,” Barbossa said. “Captain Swann. Would ye mind findin’ Mr. Pintel and securing the chart? Then, if ye’ll wait with Mr. Gibbs, I’ll be on deck directly.”

Elizabeth’s chin came up and her eyes flashed. She left the cabin without a word.

Jack’s eyebrows disappeared under his scarf. “I’m most impressed. Never actually seen her do something she didn’t want to do without at least offerin’ a few words on the subject.”

“This is between the two of us, Jack.” Barbossa picked up one of the chains and fed it through his fingers. “You’d give all this -- to the Pearl? With the proviso I give her back to ye?”

“No,” Jack said slowly. “I’d give it all to the Pearl. She’s been much abused of late.”

“And which of us do y’see as her Captain?”

“Why does it have to be one of us?” Jack said craftily. “The Pirate King . . . “

“No. The Pearl’s not for Elizabeth.” Barbossa reached for the bottle and poured them each a large portion of rum. “She’s not like us, Jack. She can make hard choices, even kill if necessary. But in her heart she doesn’t see humanity as prey. D’ye think she could leave women and children aboard a sinking ship, sail away without a backward glance? D’ye think she can take life and the property of others without ever another thought? Even if she is capable, it would change her beyond recognition, to truly live as a pirate.”

“I’ve never left women and children aboard a sinking ship, mate.” Jack held the rum between his hands and fidgeted, turning the mug about.

“I have.” Barbossa shook his head. “Truth here, Jack. You’re a good adventurer, an above-average thief, but a poor pirate.”

“Ever think I’m the good pirate, ‘n you’re the bad pirate? Elizabeth might be dead set on living as a pirate, whatever you think of her capabilities.”

“And whatever I think of her capabilities, I know she will choose her own course.” Barbossa tilted his mug and drank until the rum was gone. “No doubt you’ll think this odd, but I’d like to see that she has more than a single course to choose from.”

“What a man can do, and what a man can’t do,” Jack muttered. “You’ve changed.”

“I’ve been dead.” Barbossa stood. “And I haven’t changed that much. We’ll tend to the Pearl. I’m her Captain for now.”

“I’ve been dead as well, and nothing constructive came from the experience. I’m thinking there’s another reason for your newfound philosophical attitude.”

Barbossa tensed, then laughed wryly. “I might have this conversation with you later, but I’m betting it won’t be necessary.” He took his hat and coat from the peg near the door.

“It wouldn’t be necessary at all -- if you had never taken the Pearl, taken the cursed gold, sent Bootstrap to the depths, sank young Will Turner’s ship, thus sending young Will straight to Elizabeth’s hand and heart. We would not be in this place. I’d have m’ship, Elizabeth would still have a home and father, Will would be makin’ his swords in peace.”

Barbossa shrugged, and placed his hat on his head. “Or Elizabeth would now be Lady Norrington, you’d be serving with Davy Jones’ crew, and young Will would be off to the colonies to seek his fortune. Some long night when we’ve nothing to do, we’ll spin more such possibilities into tales.”

“And what of Will now? Do you believe Elizabeth has given him up so easily?” Jack’s black eyes were intent, his voice without its usual swagger. “D’you think even as Captain of the Dutchman, Will could go for 10 years without concerning himself with her fate, her course?”

Barbossa shook his head. “No, I don’t believe Will is out of her life for good and all. Are these really the questions that weigh on y’r mind?” He opened the cabin door. “I’ll be at the wheel until morning.”

 

“. . . better than a pot of snakes!” Elizabeth held the chart in one hand, and gestured with the other. “Just one of those worms could incapacitate everyone on deck, and trying to kill it would only worsen the effect.”

Gibbs’ eyes were round with wonder. “How could such creatures be handled? How could you board a ship with poisoned air?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Elizabeth stopped speaking as she saw Barbossa on the stairs.

“I’ll take the chart. Mr. Gibbs, I’ll have a private word with Captain Swann, then if you wish to stand watch with me, I’ll tell you why -- under no circumstance -- are you to let Captain Swann ever talk you into returning to Stinking Island.”

“Aye. ‘night, Captain Swann.” Gibbs left quickly.

“Who’s shouting orders now?” Elizabeth gave him the chart.

“Captain of the Black Pearl.”

Elizabeth untied a scrap of fabric wrapped about her belt. “Well, Captain. I have no need of this.”

Jack’s compass was damp, and still warm from her skin. Barbossa held it in his hand, then slipped it into one of his coat’s deep pockets. “May come in handy someday.”

They were quiet, looking out at the sea together. Small Jack dropped from somewhere nearby, jumped to Barbossa’s shoulders and seemed to give a sigh.

“Best get below now. You are not to let him burn incense in my cabin. I know he’s got some hidden somewhere, can smell it when the wind blows just right.”

“Barbossa?”

“Go.”

Barbossa felt the roll of the sea under his feet, the sting of wind and salt on his face. The Pearl’s voice, canvas and rigging, wood and metal, was welcome in his ears.

“She said there were flowers as would eat y’r face off, and a monstrous thing that words could scare describe.” Gibbs appeared, offering his flask.

“Thank ye.” Barbossa took a deep swallow. “Beauty often hides deeper, darker purpose, Mr. Gibbs. To look at the forest beyond the beach on Stinking Island, the first thing as strikes the eye is the unusual color and beauty of the place . . .”


	12. Journeys End

It was just before dawn when Elizabeth slowly climbed the stairs.

Wind was light and steady, Barbossa could smell the approach of a fresh, fine day. She stopped a couple of paces from him, hair floating free like a net of spun gold about the shoulders of her favorite nightshirt. Her skin looked flushed and damp.

 _Been washing in cold water again. Fastidious as a cat,_ he thought. “Captain Swann? How are you this fine morning?”

“I am exceedingly well.” Elizabeth waited still at the top of the stairs. “I am also exceedingly afraid.”

“You have the heart of a lioness, Elizabeth. No need to fear. Did you get want y’wanted?”

“In part.” She held her head high, meeting his eyes squarely. She took a step toward him.

“Captain Swann.” Barbossa held up one hand. “We’re in uncharted territory. It might be best if you let me know which part of what you wanted you _did not_ get.”

“I can’t lose either of you,” she whispered, keeping contact with his eyes, “but I don’t know how to keep both of you. Jack says it’s impossible.”

Barbossa took the final step and closed the gap between them. She came into his arms and hugged him fiercely.

“I’m not going anywhere, girl. As long as you need us, the Pearl and I will be here with you. I wouldn’t trust Jack for the definitive word on relations between men and woman.” Her hair smelled like patchouli and musk. “I told you not to let him to be burning that shite in m’cabin,” he said sternly.

“I love you.” Elizabeth ran her thumb over his lower lip.

“Asked you not to say that,” Barbossa said, mildly. “Be more believable if you hadn’t just spent the night with another man.”

“I love him too.” She stretched and took his lip between her teeth, gently, briefly. “And I love Will. If a chance comes again to be with him, I’ll take it.”

The kiss was deep and slow. Elizabeth twined her fingers into his beard and used her tongue. “Jack would still enjoy killing you, but I don’t believe he wants to kill you any longer. Does that make sense?”

“Jack. Make sense?” Barbossa laughed down at her. Part of him _had_ worried, how she’d seem afterward. There was no change in the imperious, curious expression in her beautiful eyes. There was no change in the perfect way she fit against his body, or what happened when she kissed him. “Inherent contradiction there. And the Pearl? What are his intentions?”

“Jack still claims the Pearl belongs to him. And he’s not wrong,” Elizabeth smiled, a cat’s smile of satisfaction. “This is an easy dilemma to fix, Captain Barbossa. Give the Pearl to me.”

“No.”

“Jack said you’d say that.” She lay her head on his chest. “I know my behavior will be characterized poorly by others. I suppose I will have to learn to deal with such reactions.”

“Cut out their tongues,” Barbossa recommended, smiling, “or kill ‘em.”

She began to giggle, like a school girl. “Subtle.”

“The subtlety of kings and queens, Elizabeth. What matters is how you characterize your own behavior, how you define the state of your own heart.”

“My heart?” she said slowly, “My heart is simultaneously shattered and whole, full to overflowing with joy and sorrow. Laying in my bed in Port Royal I imagined many things, but never that it was possible . . . to be so complete.”

“I don’t love you,” Barbossa said. He cupped her chin with his fingers and raised her face to his. “Not wise to love a goddess. Have to make shift with my adoration, Captain Swann.”

She pulled back and looked into his eyes, rosy blush touching the apples of her cheeks. “That was a lovely bit of compliment. I’m not a goddess, but if I were I’d tell you that Jack will be along in a few minutes to take over the wheel, and worship services begin promptly at dawn in your cabin.”

“It’s fortunate I now know where the book of sermons lies.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then ran down the stairs. Barbossa closed his eyes and summoned Calypso’s face to memory.

_It’s difficult to know if y’r still in this world, although I suppose as long as the Dutchman sails, that’s proof you and the sea are one. I wonder which of us got the greater good from our bargain? Some things we’re bound to accidentally, or through the will of others. A man, or woman, can find a way to live with those bindings, even reach a place where they are comfortable and accepting of such existence._

_I know you found such binding too limiting, too confining. You wanted the freedom you were born to -- if goddesses are born. Now, you know I am not a man given to prayer, to any deity. But I thank you for your example. I’ve come to know that it isn’t just what we seek to free ourselves from, but also what we choose to bind ourselves to -- that defines a creature’s freedom._

A small noise on the wind, like the clatter of dry crab claws dropping together, brought Barbossa’s eyes open wide.

“Fair wind, Captain.” Mr. Gibbs pulled himself up the stairs, yawning.

“And fine day. Take the wheel. Captain -- Jack will be along directly.”

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Jack emerged onto the deck.

“Jack.”

Sparrow cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Hector.”

Barbossa waited. Jack opened his mouth twice, then shut it without speaking.

“You were right,” Jack said finally. “We don’t need to talk about it.”

“We don’t. She will.” Barbossa rolled his eyes. “Take the wheel from Mr. Gibbs.”

Jack saluted, an oddly respectful gesture. He swaggered off, up the stairs, singing under his breath. “We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot . . . a pirate’s life for me!”

Before he closed the door to his cabin, Barbossa could have sworn he heard the echo of a woman’s throaty, mocking laugh on the wind.

 

They walked into Tortuga’s second-best tavern, three abreast, and took an empty table near the back of the room. Fully one-third of the early afternoon crowd looked up, then decided they had other places to be.

Jack sniffed under his armpit and grimaced. “I’m sure it wasn’t somethin’ I said.”

“RUM!” Barbossa stretched out his leg and studied the faces that still remained. “It ain’t about you, Jack. I rather b’lieve it’s about all of us together.”

“Pardon me, ‘scuse me. Captain Hector Barbossa?” The oddly lilting address came from a man a full head shorter than Elizabeth, dressed all in grey.

“Bugger.” Jack sounded startled. “Swift? Teague let you out’n about on y’r own?”

“Message,” Swift explained, pulling a sealed envelope from his coat.

Bespectacled, with white, shoulder-length curling hair, Swift was a man of no easily discernible age.

Barbossa accepted the envelope. He broke the seal with a fingernail. “Captain Barbossa, Captain Sparrow, and Captain Turner,” he read aloud, “Your immediate presence is requested at Shipwreck Cove. Best regards.”

“An’ that’s a prettily scrawled Cee and Tee at the bottom of the summons,” Jack said gloomily. “What does he want, Swift?”

“It’s not your father’s business this time, Jackie-boy. I’ll be tellin’ no tales out of school here, he knew ye would inquire.” Swift looked over the nose of his spectacles at Elizabeth and raised his eyebrows. “The Cove has an important visitor, who’s asking for the three of ye, in relation to some prophecy or other.”

“It will be a while. The Pearl needs repairin’ . . .”

Swift shook his head. “Teague said -- at once. The Cove has fine craftsmen.”

“At twice the rate of any other port,” Barbossa objected. He looked at Jack. “I’ve never heard of Teague sending such a summons.”

“I can remember one or two in my lifetime,” Jack said. “You and Elizabeth see what he wants, get the Pearl repaired . . . “

“Jackie-boy.” Swift wagged his finger.

“Bugger. When Teague says immediately, he expects us to be there already.” Jack stood and looked around the tavern, forlornly.

Swift fell in beside Barbossa as they left the tavern. “Wise choice, Captain Barbossa. Tell me, I’m something of a connoisseur of prophecies, and I’ve never read, or heard one that begins – _Seek the woman with three husbands . . ._ Do you have any notion as to who our visitor might be seeking?”


	13. Missing scenes

Elizabeth shut the cabin door and set the latch.

Jack saluted her with the rum bottle. “Told m’self more than once not to undertake adventures without sufficient rum.”

“There isn’t sufficient rum in the world to get through the adventures we have, Jack.” She looked at him, seated carelessly at the table. He had commandeered Barbossa’s shirt, the one she preferred wearing as sleep attire. His feet were bare, and more than a little grimy in spite of their plunge into the sea.

Her hair was mostly out of its braiding. Elizabeth picked the remaining braid apart, then used her fingers to comb it out as best she could. Jack swallowed hard, although he had taken no drink of rum.

“I’d like my night shirt back.” Elizabeth untucked the still-damp muslin and slid her arms out of the sleeves. She draped the shirt over the back of a chair.

“Lizabeth,” Jack whispered. “It’s not that I don’t want you.”

“That eases my mind considerably.” She let her breeches drop away, and added them to the shirt. Her heart pounded in her chest, fluttered against the sensitive spot just under her jaw. Jack looked at her nakedness with half-lidded eyes, as if he wanted to look away but could not. The tension in his long fingers circling the rum bottle turned his knuckles white.

Elizabeth brushed her hand over one breast. Cold, wet muslin and anticipation had already combined to leave her nipples puckered and hard, absurdly sensitive even under her own touch. “Bit cold here, Jack. Take off the shirt.” She turned her back to him, and looked over her shoulder, smoothing her hands along the line of her lower back. “See? Gooseflesh.”

Jack’s chair hit the floor. “Take the damnable shirt.”

Elizbeth took the shirt from his outstretched hands, gathered it under her nose and buried her face in the fabric. “I love the way this feels against my skin,” she said. “And the way it smells like all of us now.”

“Cover y’rself.” Jack’s voice was thick and rough.

Barbossa’s shirt joined her muslin shirt and breeches on the back of the chair.

“Cover me yourself, Jack.” She stepped around the table. “Cover me with your hair, your mouth, the stories etched on your skin.” His chest was hot under her hand. Elizabeth traced a design with her fingernails, and let the heel of her hand brush one of his nipples.

Jack made an indistinct sound. His fingers fanned out over the curves of her hips, traced the dip of her back and swells above her buttocks. His eyes closed completely. “There’s no going back, once we do this. Made my best effort to do what seemed right by you, thus avoidin’ grave danger to m’self and others.”

“Stop running away.”

“Can’t run. Can’t even walk.” A small glimmer beneath his eyelids, Jack peeked out at her then resolutely scrunched his eyes shut.

His face was beautiful. Elizabeth touched his dark eyelids with her mouth. Tiny crow’s feet were visible close up, shocking her with evidence of his age. Older than Will, younger than Barbossa. . . when she watched him from afar, Jack seemed ageless, a boy on a lark, even in the midst of battle. The sharp planes of his cheekbones led her to his mustache-traced mouth, expressive and sensual. In this, he and Will affected her much the same way. Their faces in repose had a sculptural, almost female beauty. She felt the heartbeat in her throat shift place, and pulse fire between her legs.

“If I were a man, I would be hard as stone,” she whispered against his mouth. His hand traveled over her ribs and closed around a breast. The simple contact made her belly tighten with need. “Taste me, Jack. You know you want to.”

Jack moaned and opened his eyes. One strong hand pushed against the small of her back, crushed her belly against his groin. The other hand left her breast and wound into her hair. Elizabeth met his gaze. Shadow and illusion, regret and promise moved across a hidden ocean of experience. The familiarity of the look made her catch her breath. It was an expression she had seen countless times already in Barbossa’s eyes.

 _It should be simple, yet he hesitates,_ she thought with affection and bemusement.

“Always admired this quality in you, Lizabeth.” He touched his lips to hers, and spoke quietly. “You’re single-minded, go after what you want. Willing to use what persuasion is necessary to _get_ what you want.”

His cock was solid against her belly. Elizabeth felt her legs tremble with the need to relocate the position of that solidity. “This is not persuasion, Jack. This is who I am. Simply. No frills or pretense. A woman who wants you. Tell me this want is not reciprocated.”

“I could lie to you, Lizabeth. Tell you that when a beautiful, naked wench appears in front of a man, it don’t much matter who she is, or why she’s naked. Going to get a predetermined result. Could tell you that result is what you feel pressed between your legs.”

“You said you wouldn’t lie. Could you finish telling me the truth more quickly?” She pushed at the waist of his breeches. “Could you finish telling me the truth while you’re inside me?”

“Bloody hell.”

Finally, she thought, meeting his mouth. His fingers kept her head pressed to his lips in a bruising, ravenous kiss. She wasn’t sure how, but his breeches disappeared and a bare leg pushed between her knees and rubbed against her cleft. Elizabeth moved her feet further apart and rubbed back, knowing she left a trail of slick wetness on his skin.

“Wet as that?” Jack husked, slanting an idol-eyed look of lust downward. He staggered to the bunk without letting go of her hips and pushed her down on the welter of blankets. “Here’s truth for you, Lizabeth.”

He entered her with a strong, sure motion. Elizabeth tightened around his cock. Like her older lover, he filled her almost past the point of comfort. Curtained beneath the fall of his dark hair, Elizabeth traced Jack’s mouth with her fingertips. “Does your face reflect the wonder, the pleasure on my own?”

“You certainly do look pleased with y’rself.” His face disappeared, mouth traveling to the tip of her breast.

The reaction of her body was immediate and exquisite. From a distance she seemed to hear Barbossa’s voice. _Exceptional pleasure is as much the result of work done by the mind, as it is work done by the body._

She heard Jack gasp, or groan.

“Don’t think I’ve ever accomplished a goal with as little effort. Difficult for a man to show off ‘is talents when all it takes is a push, love.”

“Little effort?” Elizabeth managed to laugh and move against him. “That was over two years in coming, Captain Sparrow. Would you put another two years of effort into satisfying me again?”

“Sorry. Spirit is willing, flesh is determined to get to that place you just went to. Kind of ironic. I’ve never wanted to make a better first impression.” A sheen of sweat beaded his skin. Stroke after stroke he filled her until he could push no further, pulled back then thrust again in smooth, unhurried rhythm.

Elizabeth met every stroke. Heavy with need, with the sensation that she was about to explode like a Singapore fireworks shack, she gripped his shoulders and locked her knees against him. “Jack . . . please, now would be good.”

The smooth rhythm altered. Words tumbled out, musical, foreign phrases that made her nipples ache from the mere sound of his voice. The bunk thudded and creaked as he pounded into her. Elizabeth laughed aloud, thinking of the fresh, raw scars the wood already bore.

She was almost there, so close. Jack reared back and shuddered. A wet warmth preceded his frantic withdrawal.

“Couldn’t stop,” he panted.

Elizabeth arched after him, unwilling to let his cock leave her body, her blood humming, pitched to release but lacking the final trigger. “Please, please . . .”

“Sorry, love.” He lay his head between her breasts and cupped the damp patch of hair between his fingers. “Darlin’ thing deserves better n’my fingers but every other bit of m’body is currently boneless.”

His mouth covered her nipple, a soft, pulling sensation that brought her away from the bunk in a spasm of delight. Two fingers pressing against the tiny bit of flesh at the gateway between her legs, and Elizabeth heard herself scream as need changed to the release of pleasure.

Jack rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. “Bugger.”

It was as if the world reassembled itself, took a breath and began anew. Elizabeth turned toward him and sat up.

“That’s a lovely sentiment, under these circumstances.” His chest was damp with sweat. Moisture gathered in the indigo ink of his tattoos and turned them black. Elizabeth wiped her hand across a collection of whorled marks. “I’d like a tattoo. The first on my arm, I think.”

“Why?” Jack pressed his hand against his damp scarf and pushed it further up his forehead.

“Well, I thought a dragon would . . .”

“You know that’s not what I’m askin’ about. If you were so set on us not killing each other, taking me to bed was probably not y’r best decision.”

“You’re worried about Barbossa?” Not worried, exactly, she read in his face. Perplexed. Unsure. “In a way, I’m merely following his orders.” She said the words with a heady sense of amusement and fulfillment. “He said I would have to do the taking. He was close to the mark. Always is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He doesn’t either.” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “The morning after Will sailed away, you and the Pearl sailed away, there was nothing left of me. Barbossa was the first solid thing I found to hold to. I love him, Jack.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, under these circumstances.” Jack turned on his side and faced her. “Which of us did you think to keep, Lizabeth? Will, me, or the old lecher?”

She pushed her hair off her shoulders and sat up very straight. “The only thing I keep of the three of you is Will’s heart in a box. You, Barbossa are parts of me, Jack.” Elizabeth raised her chin and clenched her hands as she said the words. “I will have no keeping, or losing, or throwing away between us. Knowing and having and taking, however, will be permitted.”

“Not the way the world works, love.” Jack’s voice sounded ancient. “Goes against man’s fundamental nature . . .”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, and I have to say that’s unlikely, I’m not a man.” Elizabeth held her hands, palms up, and made a motion as if weighing something. “Man’s fundamental nature . . . pot of piss . . . “ She shrugged. “You threw the compass away, Jack. Why?”

His eyes drifted from her face. One long, tar-stained finger reached to caress the lower swell of the closest breast. “Found what I desired, Lizabeth. Tired of sailing in circles.”

“Then sail with me for a while. Sail with us.” His mustache and beard left a trail of pleasant sensitivity, but the sensation of his mouth taking her nipple was so hot and sweet that her mind lost focus.

“Extraordinary,” Jack breathed against her skin. “All talking ceases when I do that. Ship can’t have two captains, love.”

“Why not? If Barbossa gave me the Pearl . . . ahh . . .” He had both breasts in his hands, fingers on one nipple, tongue on the other. Elizabeth felt the lower half of her body turn to liquid fire.

“He won’t.” Jack let go of her breasts, rolled over her and padded away toward an old battered cabinet. His head disappeared as he searched inside, then reappeared with a smirk on his face.

“Is that what I think?”

Jack lit the incense against the lantern flame and placed it in an empty mug. Spirals of white, heavily fragrant smoke curled into the air. “Smells like monkey in here. How can you stand it?”

“Barbossa specifically said that under no circumstances was I to let you . . .”

“Talking again?” Jack knelt beside the bunk and buried his face between her breasts.

Elizabeth closed her mouth and eyes. Just for a moment, she thought. There would be plenty of time to talk, later.


End file.
